For years, folks have been trying to find ways to cut state spending on corrections, which now costs the taxpayers more than the state spends on all our colleges and universities.
Now, finally, a breakthrough may have been achieved. (If you think you hear the sounding of trumpets and the beating of drums, you may be right.) A report released last week concludes that releasing prison inmates who have served their minimum sentence would save the state $262 million over the next seven years.
The only question is whether our lawmakers will buy it. With looming huge deficits and corrections now costing us $2 billion a year, they should at least give this solution a hard, hard look.
There is wide recognition that something needs to be done. Legislative experts from both parties, prodded by a wide variety of groups and alarmed at the upcoming fiscal nightmare, have been at work negotiating changes in the workings of the parole system.
And the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center (CSG) was commissioned last year to report on possible cost savings.
Their report arrived last Thursday. The reform plan was greeted warmly by legislators from both parties, judges, police officers and prosecutors. But although a good first step, the report doesn’t go nearly far enough in cutting costs by the “hundreds of millions” in annual savings called for by a coaliti on of business, education, local government and nonprofit groups.
The $262 million is the sum of savings achieved over seven years and amounts to less than a 2 percent cut in corrections spending. And prison experts, police and prosecutors all want to spend much of that on various ways to keep ex-cons from re-entering prison. So the net savings to the state might well turn out to be zero.
And now it turns out the CSG report was carefully pre-negotiated to keep the big (and contentious) items off the table. A footnote admits that issues of “labor management, where there might be opportunities for increased efficiencies” were left out. Instead, the report concentrated on ideas most likely to achieve consensus.
In other words, the CSG report provided useful “air cover” for the limited agreements reached in advance. But it deliberately didn’t get to the heart of the problem: That big and increasing spending on prisons is crowding out other important parts of the budget.
Governor Jennifer Granholm, for instance, was reported to be grumpy that the report didn’t deal with Michigan’s sentencing structure, which is unique in the country in the way it requires specific sentences for various crimes — and then gives the state Parole Board enormous power to release inmates.
Currently, Michigan puts more people in prison and keeps them there for much longer and at a higher annual cost than other Great Lakes states. Loosening sentencing guidelines and releasing non-violent criminals, elderly and very sick prisoners could reduce Michigan’s incarceration rate to that of neighboring states. It would also save us hundreds of millions, according to the Citizens Research Council and Public Sector Consultants.
And the state could save hundreds of millions more by clamping down on inefficiencies, tightening work rules and prison guard overtime and privatizing some prison operations, according to some Senate Republicans and business groups.
Neither of these approaches made it into the CSG report, probably because no one wanted them there just now. The tough decisions are still to come. The budget deficit for the year starting in October is now estimated at $1.4 billion — and likely to grow. Everybody knows corrections is a good place to save big bucks.
Governor Granholm won’t give her State of the State speech till Feb. 3, at which time she is expected to deliver her budget recommendations, which might call for many millions more in cuts.
Senate Republicans may call for a full audit of the prison system. And the Corrections Department itself might decide to push further on its own. The CSG report is just “a step,” according to director Patricia Caruso, who adds “we’re not done.”
Two other big picture items also need to be explored.
Everybody agrees that thousands of prisoners – perhaps as many as a third – are mentally ill and could be treated far less expensively through a system of mental health clinics that would require them to take their medicines. Milton Mack, the thoughtful Wayne County Chief Probate Judge, has written a paper pointing to the closure of state mental hospitals that dumped patients on the streets, where their deviant behavior amounts to “criminalizing the mentally ill.”
And groups like the Hope Network have been calling to move medically fragile prisoners to federally funded treatment centers outside the prison system at considerable savings to Michigan taxpayers.
Despite its faults, the CSG report did accomplish two important things. It raised the issue of prison system costs in an objective and nonpartisan way. And it provided reams of statistics that shed light into the dark corners of the criminal justice system:
* Michigan’s violent crime rate is the highest in the Great Lakes region. Despite increased state spending on prisons, it remained unchanged from 2000-2007 while the national rate declined 8 percent.
* The certainty of arrest for a violent crime in Michigan (28 percent) is much lower than the national rate (44 percent).
* Michigan has the fewest law enforcement personnel per capita among the Great Lakes states, despite the highest rate of violent crime.
* Young men aged 17-24 commit a quarter of all violent crimes in Michigan, but represent only 6 percent of the population.
* More than half of parolees and probationers are unemployed.
Expect to hear much more on this issue in the months ahead.
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Editor’s Note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics, and a former chairman of the Michigan chapter of the Nature Conservancy. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a centrist think-and-do tank which publishes the Michigan Scorecard. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.
