Pennsylvania Looks Toward The “New York Model”
Pennsylvania corrections’ officials are looking at New York’s recent reforms, including closing prisons and camps, as a potential model for dealing with PA’s overcrowded future.
A month after [New York's] announcement, [Pennsylvania Governor] Rendell presented lawmakers with a starkly different picture. With the state’s prison population skyrocketing, he said in his annual budget address, a spending increase was necessary, in large part because of rising prison costs. His warning came at a time when several states, led by New York, are beginning to move away from mandatory sentencing for nonviolent drug and property crimes and toward alternative sentencing and expanded drug and mental-health treatment along with the implementation of early release for good behavior.
Now Pennsylvania is working to implement elements of what some officials call “the New York model.”
“There are 10 to 15 years’ worth of studies showing just locking up drug offenders or those who commit property crimes doesn’t work,” [PA DOC Secretary Jeffrey] Beard said. “Confinement alone, without addressing problems, is not an effective way of dealing with people.”
A package of four bills modeled in part on the New York laws and supported by Rendell cleared the state House this month and heads to the Senate, where it has leadership support. “This is a huge step forward for reinventing our criminal-justice system,” said House Speaker Dennis O’Brien (R., Phila.), sponsor of one of the bills, who has fought for prison reform for five years. O’Brien’s bill would require those convicted of serious crimes to serve sentences in state prison to relieve overcrowding in county jails and would add incentives for nonviolent offenders, including drug and alcohol treatment and literacy and job training, to curb recidivism. Other bills would increase supervision for probation and parole and give more flexibility to relocate seriously ill inmates to medical-care facilities.
See more details at the Philadelphia Inquirer.