A billion-dollar burden or justice?

AJC:

“We have proven that we can be tough on crime and that we can spend $1.2 billion a year doing it,” said Brian Owens, the silver-haired former parole officer who now runs Georgia’s prison system. “But I think it might be time to transition to being smart on crime.”

One in 13 Georgians is behind bars, on probation or on parole, according to the Pew Center on the States. That’s the highest rate of correctional control in the nation and more than the double the national average: 1 in 31.

By far the most costly segment of corrections is locking someone up. About 1 in 70 Georgians is behind bars, according to the Pew study.

“It makes no intuitive sense that Georgia is the ninth-most populous state with about 9.5 million citizens but has a prison population the same as New York state with 19.5 million citizens,” Owens said. “It’s not because we’re committing more crime in Georgia.’’

Rather, it’s because the state’s laws and policies keep offenders behind bars longer than ever. Among inmates released last year, the average time in prison was 3.4 years, up from 1.6 years in 1990. At today’s price tag of $49 a day, the cost to house the average offender jumped from about $28,800 to more than $61,000.

The trend held even among nonviolent offenders: the average inmate released last year on a drug possession charge spent 21 months locked up, compared with 10 months in 1990.

Even small changes in sentences have a gigantic financial impact when multiplied across the prison population. Simply shaving a month or two off a typical inmate’s stay could allow a 1,000-bed cut in prison capacity. The result: a savings of $17.9 million a year.

If judges sentenced offenders to an average of 55 months instead of 60 months, the state would save in the neighborhood of $90 million a year.

Offenders are in prison longer largely because Georgia is much less likely now to shave significant time off of sentences through parole, even though the state runs one of the most highly-regarded parole supervision operations in the nation.

The increased time, along with a jump in prison admissions, explains why corrections spending in Georgia has increased five-fold since 1985.

“I think there is room to right-size a little bit and still make public safety the focus of what we’re doing,” Owens said.

Mark Earley, a Republican former attorney general in Virginia who is chief executive of the nonprofit Prison Fellowship, agreed.

“When you have in Georgia 1 in every 70 adults [incarcerated] and 1 in every 13 is in some form of correctional control, that’s big government with a big big G, ” he said.

Georgia legislators avoided any serious debate about changes to the state’s sentencing system this year. They relied on staffing cuts, more efficient new prison wings and federal stimulus dollars to cover $1.1 billion in costs.

But they will have to take on the issue next year, when $85 million in federal money is no longer there to fill the gap.

Owens, a details man who is all about efficiency and data, is eliminating 2,000 positions from the department, down to 13,000. And he has told lawmakers there aren’t many more places to cut if the state wants to reduce the corrections budget.

“There have to be changes in sentencing in this state or parole is going to have to open up the doors,” Owens said.

Most Georgia legislators are wary of even discussing changes that would lead to shorter sentences, either because they believe in long prison terms or because they are fearful of a soft-on-crime image. And some in districts with lots of prison jobs fret that fewer inmates in the system will make local correctional facilities vulnerable.

But Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge) said a public discussion of Georgia’s approach to criminal sentencing makes sense.

“I don’t think we ought to let public safety depend on getting a bargain basement price, but I think we do have to be conscious of the cost of incarceration,” Ralston said. “I think the dialogue has already started.”

Ralston, an attorney, said he is a strong supporter of Georgia’s drug courts, an approach to handling substance abusers that is managed by a judge but offers alternatives to incarceration. And he said that even the most tough-minded in the criminal justice system – cops and prosecutors – tell him Georgia needs more discretion in the courtroom and more alternatives to prison.

“From time to time we need to step back and ask ourselves ‘Is it working?’ ” Ralston said.

Posted via email from Jim Nichols