Prison Growth Eases In Oregon
Thousands fewer lawbreakers are expected to end up in Oregon state prisons in the coming years, compared with what policymakers were expecting just six months ago, says a new report. Report from the Register-Guard.
The state prison inmate population, currently 13,910, will grow to 15,000 by August 2013, according to the state’s newly issued forecast. In an earlier forecast, released in April, the state predicted the prison population would pass the 15,000-inmate mark much earlier — by August 2010 — and reach 16,100 by August 2013. Analysts attributed the slow-down in prison population growth to state legislation passed in early summer that temporarily suspends the voter-passed tough-on-crime law, Measure 57.
Damon Bell, the senior state economist who authored the report, said the slower growth in the expected prison population is on track to allow the Corrections Department and other public-safety agencies to stay within the restraints placed in their budgets by the 2009 Legislature. The Legislature, facing a projected $2 billion shortfall for 2009-11 general-fund revenues, sought to save $87 million in corrections spending by delaying and watering down the implementation of most provisions in Measure 57, which voters passed in 2008. The fewer additional lawbreakers who are incarcerated, the slower the growth in personnel and other costs for the prison system. Lawmakers suspended Measure 57 prison sentences for most of the drug and property crimes committed before 2013. They also elected to let prisoners shave 30 percent off their sentences — up from 20 percent — through good behavior, known as “earned time.” The Legislature also reduced from 180 days to 60 days the jail time most lawbreakers would serve for violating terms of a felony probation.
Guy Hall, the Department of Corrections population management administrator, said the latest forecast of a slower-growing prison population forecast means his department was on track to realize the cost-saving moves sought by the Legislature. One of those moves was to delay plans for construction of a 532-bed minimum-security prison and a 1,262 medium-security lockup, which were both planned as part of a correctional facility just outside Junction City. Plans for a 360-bed mental hospital elsewhere on the state-owned Junction City parcel remain on track. Instead of breaking ground this summer and completing the minimum-security phase of the prison complex in 2012, the Legislature’s actions pushed back the completion date to late 2014. Hall said the latest forecast data don’t alter those plans. The medium-security lockup was originally to be built after the lower-security facility’s completion. It is no longer on a specific construction timetable for the Department of Corrections.
Because prosecutors, courts, and the rest of the criminal justice system are in the earliest stages of implementing the Legislature’s new sentencing and inmate-release policies, Hall said, it is difficult to say how accurate the forecast will prove to be in the long run. “It’s fairly precise up close, and as you get to the outer years, it gets more fuzzy,” he said.
Uncategorized