The boldest move in the governor’s budget proposal is a plan to close several prisons and cut $120 million from the state prison budget.
It’s the kind of step toward reforms that a diverse coalition of business, education and non-profit groups has repeatedly urged elected leaders to take. Concern over prison spending has steadily grown in recent years as the Corrections Department budget skyrocketed and crowded out many other strategic priorities for Michigan’s future.
The governor’s most courageous Corrections reform in her budget is to add five members to the state parole board in an effort to steadily release thousands of state prisoners who have been held past their mandatory minimum sentences at a cost of more than $30,000 per year each with no noticeable reduction in crime, according to the Citizens Research Council of Michigan.
The parole board change is a savvy way to detour years of legislative gridlock and opposition to calls for overhaul of state sentencing guidelines. But the political risk is potentially very high. It is almost inevitable that some parolee released under the governor’s new aggressive steps will follow in the footsteps of Patrick Selepak and commit a new ghastly crime. But every statistical study suggests those cases are extreme outliers – but political grenades nonetheless.
Despite the positive reform steps, much more could be done to lower the costs of the state prison system (which costs taxpayers more than Michigan’s universities). Additional reform ideas remain untouched, including Republican calls for privatization and operational efficiencies, private sector proposals to save money by outsourcing the care and supervision of medically fragile prisoners. Likewise, Democratic Rep. Alma Wheeler-Smith has a common-sense proposal to save state taxpayers $9 million per year by transferring to federal custody some 500 inmates in Michigan prisons who have deportation orders.
Those and any other reform approaches must be considered. Prison reforms and savings should not stop with the governor’s $120 million proposal.
2 Comments
Privitization is a bad idea. I know the Chamber of Commerce, the driver for the Center for Michigan, wants business to rule. But since education became Chamber of Commerce driven, learning has gone down and expenses have gone up.
Prison sentences are becoming useless as a deterrent to crime and seem to rehabilitate very few criminals. Once convicted of a crime, the individual finds life harder while trying to get a job and explain for these past crimes over and over. Furthermore, the cost to our society to keep these individuals in prison is enormous. As an alternative, we should pursue high financial disincentives to criminal acts. We can fund the criminal system with revenue from tickets, fines, and other financial punishments. We can hold parents responsible for children under the age of 12 or 15 or 18 (take your pick). A lot of crime is the result of lazy or lousy parenting. Not all is but much of it is because of the parents. We need to get God back into the schools. All this crime went up since we tried to separate God from children. If we get rid of the only good influence in a child’s life, then we allow Satan an opportunity to “fill the void” so to speak. Parents have a unique responsibility to raise up good children and not just have a bunch of babies like the woman with 8 new babies for a total of 14.