OK Prison Numbers Continue to Climb
The total state prison population across the nation declined in 2009 for the first time in almost 40 years. The numbers didn’t exactly plummet — less than half a percentage point, or 4,777 fewer inmates than in 2008. The decrease, however, represents a sharp contrast from 1972 to 2008 when state prison populations grew by 708 percent. News from the Tulsa World.
Even with the slight decrease, the number of inmates in state institutions — 1,404,053 — is equivalent to locking up every man, woman and child in Philadelphia.
Last year, 26 states housed fewer inmates than they did the year before, according to a recent report by the Pew Center on the States. Twenty-four states, including Oklahoma, continued to add inmates — some with a vengeance.
As of Dec. 31, Oklahoma had 26,397 inmates, up about 530 inmates from 2008. That 2.1 percent increase might not sound so bad unless you consider that the prison system:
- Is at 99 percent capacity with 1,500 inmates backed up in county jails
- Is down 700 corrections officers
- Is in a state that has a $1.2 billion revenue shortfall going into the new fiscal year beginning July 1
Oklahoma is tough on crime. Its Legislature, in fact, is habitually TOC, in good times and in bad, and especially in election years. As one retired lawmaker put it: “We’ve felonized just about everything but flatulence and I hear that’s coming soon.”
Even with a funding crisis, the drumbeat to felonize more crimes — 26 — and to enhance penalties for existing crimes — 19 more — continued this legislative session.
Board of Corrections member David Henneke recently called the prison population levels “beyond critical.” Board member Robert Rainey complained lawmakers had mostly ignored the board’s suggestions on ways to save money.
Several states,the Pew report aid, have enacted reforms designed to give taxpayers a better return on their public safety dollars. Strategies include:
- Diverting low-level offenders and probation and parole violators from prison
- Strengthening community supervision and re-entry programs
- Accelerating the release of low-risk inmates who complete risk-reduction programs
Oklahoma has adopted some of those policies but not in great enough numbers to make a major difference.
About 90 percent of the offenders we lock up eventually get out and live among us. But the state spends relatively little money treating inmates for addictions or training them for jobs. And, we make it impossible for most felons to find employment when they do get out. So, too many career criminals take up where they left off when released because they have no other skills and drug abusers return to their addictions. It’s a sure-fire combination for keeping the prisons full.
In the past 20 years, corrections costs nationally have quadrupled and account for one of every 15 state general fund discretionary dollars. Corrections represents the second fastest-growing category of state budgets behind Medicaid.
The Pew report, however, found that the public is warming to prison alternatives.
“The public is supportive of using community corrections rather than prison for nonviolent offenders,” authors said. For instance, in a 2007 voter poll, 71 percent of Texas respondents preferred a mandatory intensive treatment program as an alternative to prison, a level of support that increased to 83 percent when respondents were told the diversion of lower-level offenders could help avert $1 billion in new prison costs.
Declining state revenues are starting to make policy leaders realize that the public’s support of incarceration may wane when it’s done on a scale that robs mightily from other state services.
Advances in supervision technology, including GPS monitors, faster drug tests and ATM-like reporting kiosks, offer authorities new technologies to monitor the whereabouts and activities of offenders in the community.
“These capabilities are giving lawmakers, judges and prosecutors greater confidence that they can protect public safety and hold offenders accountable with sanctions other than prison,” Pew authors said. Policy leaders are realizing that they can effectively reduce their prison populations, and save public funds without sacrificing public safety.
“That’s a drastically different policy environment than the one that existed in the 1970s and 1980s, when states decided that building more and more prison cells was the answer to crime,” authors said.
For some offenders incarceration is the appropriate punishment. Other offenders might serve their debt to society through less costly means, freeing up funds for other priorities such as seeing that students are educated, that roads, bridges and other infrastructure are maintained, that the elderly and fragile are protected and that the health care system is adequate.
In punishing lawbreakers it’s important to distinguish between those we fear and those we’re just mad at. We have to prioritize spending. Do we throw Bubba in prison or do we throw grandma out on the street? When we put people behind bars who might be punished through less expensive means, we sometimes end up punishing ourselves.
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