As their budgetary struggles continue, state governments could save millions by reducing criminal sentences for nonviolent offenders without risking higher crime rates.
That’s the message of a recent report by the Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. It attempts to help states achieve long-term fiscal health by identifying program investments that provide the greatest returns.
The Pew study found that prisoners released in 2009 served an average of nine additional months in custody, or 36 percent longer, than offenders released in 1990. While that may not sound like much, the additional time in prison cost states an average of $23,300 per offender — or a total of more than $10 billion, with more than half of the cost going for nonviolent offenders.
“Violent and career criminals belong behind bars, and for a long time,” said Adam Gelb, director of the study. “But building more prisons to house lower-risk nonviolent inmates for longer sentences simply is not the best way to reduce crime.”
The report says the combined federal-state-local inmate count in 2008 reached 2.3 million, or one in 100 adults. Annual state spending on corrections now tops $51 billion, with prisons accounting for the vast majority of the cost.
According to the Pew report, the trends are similar here. The average Minnesota offender released in 2009 served 2.3 years in custody, 38 percent more time than the average offender released in 1990. The added cost to the taxpayers: $93.2 million for the 3,482 offenders released in 2009.
State not impressed with report
John Schadl, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, was largely dismissive of the report. Schadl said that while Minnesota joined other states in the 1980s and 1990s in imposing tougher sentences for violent and drug offenses, this state still has one of the lowest incarceration rates in the nation — second only to Maine in 2010.
Schadl said Minnesota currently holds 9,500 adult offenders in 10 prisons at a cost of $456 million a year. In comparison, he said, Wisconsin has 23,000 inmates in 22 prisons at a cost of $1.2 billion a year.
“Our typical offender in prison is someone who is a threat to society, which is why they are there,” he added.
Department officials also said the Pew study used prison cost figures for Minnesota that were somewhat inflated, exaggerating the savings that could be achieved by reducing sentences.
Over the years, Minnesota has benefitted from the community corrections act passed in 1973 and the sentencing guidelines law enacted in 1978, both aimed at reserving state prisons for the most serious offenders and dealing with nonviolent offenders through community-based programs.
Sources: All time served numbers from a Pew analysis of the National Corrections Reporting Program data.
Still, the adult inmate population in Minnesota has more than quadrupled since 1980, with a growing proportion of the offenders serving time for drug-related offenses.
Grant Duwe, research director for the corrections department, said the growth has been driven not only by tougher sentences for violent and drug crimes, but also by the felony DUI law enacted in 2002 for chronic offenders and by the explosion in methamphetamine use in the last decade.
Duwe said more than 700 inmates now in prison are serving time for DUI offenses, and that the number of meth offenders behind bars has come down to that level after reaching 1,100 in the middle of the last decade.
According to the Pew report, the amount of time served by Minnesota drug offenders released in 2009 averaged 2.2 years, a 99 percent increase from 1990. For property crimes, the amount of time served by offenders released in 2009 averaged 1.6 years, a 16 percent increase.
The Pew report says tougher sentences deserve some of the credit for the decline in serious crime over the past two decades – perhaps accounting for one-quarter to one-third of the drop, according to some experts.
“But criminologists and policy makers increasingly agree that we have reached a ‘tipping point’ with incarceration, where additional imprisonment will have little if any effect on crime,” it says.
A Pew analysis conducted by researchers using data from three states — Florida, Maryland, and Michigan — found that a significant proportion of nonviolent offenders who were released in 2004 could have served shorter prison terms without adversely affecting public safety.
Alexander sees merit
Hennepin County District Judge Pamela Alexander, president of the Minneapolis-based Council on Crime and Justice, said she sees considerable merit in the idea of reducing sentences for nonviolent offenders. “We know from just about every study that has been done that longer sentences really don’t do much as far as reducing recidivism rates,” she said.
“Politicians aren’t going to win races saying, ‘Let’s not put people in jail’ — that’s not what voters want to hear,” Alexander said. “But now people are starting to look at the cost [of incarceration], which is getting astronomical. We can actually get better results with shorter prison sentences and treatment than we can with longer sentences.”
District Judge Kevin Burke said he has read the Pew report and it is “spot on.” Burke, who has served as a Hennepin County district judge for 28 years and chief judge for four terms, said he would invest more dollars up front on programs such as education that prevent crime, and focus more on treatment rather than incarceration for drug offenders.
“I think the image that Minnesota has of itself is that we’re the Land of 10,000 Treatment Programs and we’re enlightened,” Burke said. “If so, wouldn’t we be first in getting people into treatment and having a more comprehensive approach to dealing with drug offenders? We aren’t. We’re average. And I think average is too expensive.”
A worthwhile question
…in the title. I’m inclined to agree with Judge Burke – prevention and treatment seem to me more effective means of dealing with much nonviolent crime than a prison sentence. If prohibition worked, I’d be all for it, but prohibition demonstrably doesn’t work, and the “War on Drugs” has been an abysmal and costly failure. Drug use and abuse would cost us far less as a society if we treated it as a public health problem rather than criminalizing it.
Beyond all that, however, is the fact that a long-term prisoner is contributing quite a bit less to society than the society is getting back from him or her, even if every prisoner is making license plates. I’m also old-fashioned enough that I still believe in the notion that one’s “debt to society” for having committed a crime can actually be repaid. The idea that, once you’re a convicted felon, you can never get your civil rights back, and are beyond the pale politically and otherwise, seems counterproductive. Outcasts within the society have no stake in it, and as many as possible ought to have a stake in their society.
Excellent post
We have overreacted on nonviolent crime.
The drug sentencing is out of balance with MN sensibilities
While our average sentences for violent and property offenders are less than the national averages, our drug sentencing is equal to the national average. The average sentences for drugs are up 100% since 1990. Community treatment is an option. The DOC does not come close to giving treatment to all of it’s offenders who need it, so what’s the sense of having all those drug offenders sit in prison for a couple of years at taxpayers expense just to get released to the community in the same shape as they went in? Sounds like an expensive strategy, not a crime prevention strategy.
Price of Prison
Cost of incarceration and length of sentence are important to look at in this budgetary climate. VERA recently did a Price of Prison Report where they estimated the annual cost of incarceration per prisoner in MN in 2010 at $41,364. This included underfunded pensions and retiree cost, administrative overhead and capital costs. While MN has one of the lowest incarceration rates, it had the 10th highest annual cost. The average national cost of the 40 states surveyed was $31,307
http://www.vera.org/files/price-of-prisons-minnesota-fact-sheet.pdf
War profiteering
Big Government generates more cash flow from enforcing drug laws than the cartels do from breaking them. Rehabilitation has nothing to do with our current criminal justice system; it’s all about the money.
It may be all about the money . . . . .
but don’t forget about the push to privatize our prison system. Guess who’s behind that? Hint: It ain’t Big Government:
http://www.thenation.com/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor#
Capitalists looking for new opportunities.
Since we seem to agree that the criminal justice system is nothing more than a money generating machine, competition shouldn’t surprise you.
I’m impressed that Mr. Swift doesn’t defend the current draconian criminal justice system, but doesn’t it seem clear that the reason the government gets involved in paying for-profit hacks to do their job for them (administrating prisons, in this case) is a consequence of calls for smaller government, and distrust of government compared to the private sector? Couldn’t this problem be fixed simply by realizing that it’s the job of government to administer criminal justice, and give them the resources they need to do it themselves?
Grover Norquist
Even Grover Norquist questions the lock em up strategy and ask his fellow conservatives to “reconsider the “tough on crime” approach so that we can cost-effectively increase public” safety.www.nationalreview.com/articles/259263/conservative-principles-and-prison-grover-norquist?pg=2
A sensible drug policy should be two-pronged: legalize and regulate soft drugs like cannabis, in the same way tobacco is regulated; treat addiction to more harmful hard drugs like cocaine and heroin as a disease and prescribe hard drugs as medicines that temporarily relieve symptoms of the addiction disease. This will take the lifeline away from the criminals and protect the health and wealth of drug users, while saving tax payers billions of dollars every year.
The obvious conclusion to privatizing humanistic endeavors
Profit motive belongs in the private sector. Whenever you introduce profit motive into humanistic endeavors like health, education, or public safety, the profit motive will always bastardize the humanistic goal. It is not difficult to comprehend. When you monetarily incentivize more people in prisons, we’ll have more people in prisons. When you monetarily incentivize denial of medical care, we get the health system we have. When you monetarily incentivize education you get 60 kids in a classroom like Detroit now has.
In a social democracy, there is room for both regulated market capitalism to make our Nikes and our Cars and government to take care of our humanistic endeavors where profit only perverts the real goals.