No Hard Time for Prison Budgets

State subsidies for homeless shelters will be slashed
while corections gets $40 million increase and state
budgets $220 million for 'death row housing' at San
Quentin.
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By JOHN M. BRODER - The New York Times - January 19, 2003

LOS ANGELES, CA - Gov. Gray Davis's proposed budget for the
coming fiscal year left virtually no state program immune from
the pain.

State subsidies for homeless shelters will be slashed. Artificial
limbs will no longer be provided for impoverished amputees.
Welfare payments to the blind will be cut. College students will
pay higher fees.

But the state's vast prison system emerged untouched. In fact,
Mr. Davis, a Democrat, proposed a $40 million increase in the
corrections department's $5.3 billion budget and wants to spend
$220 million on a new death row at San Quentin.

At a time when two-thirds of the states are facing severe budget
shortfalls, governors are struggling to maintain their costly and
overcrowded prisons, a legacy of the get-tough-on-crime climate
of the past 25 years. There are now nearly two million inmates,
each costing on average more than $22,000 a year.

Prisons may be busting state budgets, but there is not a governor
today who wants to be seen as soft on crime. Many governors, like
Mr. Davis, George E. Pataki of New York and Ted Kulongoski, the
newly elected Democratic governor of Oregon, have made a point of
maintaining or increasing prison spending, even at the expense of
other social programs.

Benjamin D. de Haan, the interim director of the Oregon
Department of Corrections, asked the Legislature to close five
prisons and release 3,000 prisoners to meet spending targets for
the next budget cycle. Oregon's prisons are bursting at the seams
because voters in 1994 approved a stiff sentencing system that
lengthened the average prison stay to 40 months from 16 months.
The state now houses 12,000 prisoners at a cost of $500 million a
year.

"We're building prisons as quickly as possible, but we can't keep
up," Dr. de Haan said. "We're going to have to contract for beds
in county jails and just crowd them into existing
institutions."

Governor Kulongoski and the Legislature, fearing a popular
backlash, rejected Dr. de Haan's plan. Instead, the governor
proposed slightly increasing the department's budget.

Critics on the left say that these governors are neglecting
critical social programs for political reasons.

"It's outrageous," said Gloria Romero, a California state senator
and the Democratic chairwoman of a new legislative committee on
prisons. "It's easy to slash those programs that serve the poor,
the elderly, the disabled, children on welfare. They don't have
politically powerful lobbyists walking the halls of Sacramento.
Why should corrections be the only department that gets an
increase, and a significant one at that?"

Critics of Mr. Davis point to the $3 million the prison guards'
union has contributed to Mr. Davis's political campaigns as a
possible reason.

But state officials argue that while prison populations have
leveled off after more than a decade of explosive growth, costs
continue to rise. In the 1990's, many states committed to
expensive prison construction plans, which must be completed.

Federal court orders have mandated an end to triple-bunking and
ordered the establishment of prison educational and recreational
programs in some states. Health care expenses are spiraling, in
part because the prison population is growing older.

Elsewhere, governors are looking for cuts that don't imperil
public safety or their political futures. About half the states
have cut spending on prisons over the past year and expect
further cuts for the coming year, according to the National
Conference of State Legislatures.

Some cuts are unlikely to rile voters. Minnesota is charging
prisoners for room and board. Iowa cut desserts from twice a day
to once a day and replaced orange juice with a generic version of
Tang.

Other cuts may turn out to be politically unpopular, should there
be a rise in crime. Kentucky, Montana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and
Texas are releasing certain nonviolent prisoners early.

Other states are trying to repeal or revise tough sentencing laws
like mandatory minimums, so-called truth-in-sentencing laws,
three-strikes provisions and cutbacks in parole. The laws, which
states began to adopt in the 1970's, resulted in a nearly sixfold
increase in prison populations over the last three decades.

Michigan voted to repeal its strict mandatory minimum sentencing
laws for drug crimes, reducing the number of first-time drug
offenders being locked up. Connecticut, Louisiana, Mississippi
and North Dakota have altered their mandatory sentencing laws,
allowing much shorter sentences for nonviolent offenders.

ARKANSAS, California, Idaho, Oregon and Texas have expanded the
role of drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration.

Governor Pataki made an issue during his re-election campaign of
changing the Rockefeller-era sentencing laws that have put 19,000
drug offenders behind bars in New York, but nothing has happened
yet.

"What they are doing is trying to make a distinction between who
we are angry at and who we are afraid of," said Nicholas Turner,
director of national programs at the Vera Institute of Justice in
New York, a research group. "Those we are afraid of belong behind
bars, but those we are angry at we can sanction in a different
way that is less expensive. For the past 20 years, we've just
relied on prisons to deal with both groups."

But what troubles conservatives is that this debate over sentencing is
being driven by budget problems, not questions of justice or public safety.

"The state ought not to change criminal penalties or release
people early solely out of a concern for cost savings," said Todd
F. Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies
at the Heritage Foundation. "Laws which unfairly or unjustly
incarcerate people ought to be repealed, regardless of the
budgetary impact. But laws that the citizens demanded to protect
them and that justly incarcerate criminals ought not to be
touched."
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Graphic of US Prison Expenditures as percentage of state budgets.
http://tinyurl.com/4mpf

© 2003 New York Times
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source page: http://tinyurl.com/4mpd

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