Reoffending by thousands of criminals serving short prison terms in England and Wales costs the taxpayer up to £10bn a year, a report has said. Reported by the BBC.

The National Audit Office found many prisoners were spending all day in their cells rather than being engaged in training and rehabilitation.

It added there was also “little evidence” the risk of short-sentence prisoners reoffending had been reduced.

The government said it would take the report’s recommendations forward.

Of all those in jail, prisoners serving less than a year have the highest reoffending rates and the most convictions, an average of 16.

Around 60,000 prisoners are jailed for less than 12 months each year, costing taxpayers £300m.

They are mostly convicted of theft and minor violent crimes and at any one time make up nearly one in 10 of prisoners in England and Wales; the prison population is currently about 82,000.

Value for money
Most spend as few as 45 days inside, and are released automatically at the halfway point of their sentence.

But in that time they are not given “appropriate assistance” to help them turn around their lives, the report said.

The NAO found that activities for this group of offenders were “inadequate”. About half were not involved in work or courses and spent almost all day in their cells.

The report concludes that short jail terms do not offer value for money. A six-week spell in prison costs £4,500 – £300 more than a highly intensive two-year community order involving unpaid work and rehabilitation schemes.

And overall, with 60% of short-sentenced prisoners committing another crime within a year of getting out, the social and economic cost to the country was between £7bn and £10bn a year.

But John Thornhill, chairman of the Magistrates Association, argued that alternatives to custodial sentences were often simply not available.

He told BBC Radio 5 live: “In my area of Merseyside we have a programme called Intensive Alternative To Custody. Magistrates like using that particular order… but [it] is not available across the country.

“It’s only available in six areas and we’re told that once the pilot scheme’s finished that alternative will not be there.”

The president of the Prison Governors Association, Paul Tidball, says magistrates had been criticised for being “so free” with the use of short-term sentences, which did not work.

‘Too short’
He told Radio 5 live: “I’ve heard the Magistrates Association in the past… saying prisons should do more with them [prisoners] while they have them.

“But if you’ve only got someone for six weeks, there’s a limit to what can be done.”

He added resources should be concentrated on those at greatest risk of reoffending, and said there should be better investment in communities in the first place to prevent crime.

Former inmate Craig Morrison called for earlier intervention by therapists and more robust community sentences to tackle problems such as drugs.

He said he spent his short stints in jail scrubbing floors and in the gym.

“It was too short a time to do anything rehabilitative with me. You know, I’d just get out and carry on from where I left off, playing catch-up, go out, committing crime straight away,” he told Radio 5 live.

“It sounds messed up but I was quite comfortable where I was. I was brought up in care since 12 and I accepted that was my lot in life.

“I had a moment of clarity – unfortunately it was years down the line. I had to go through years of therapy to realise how messed up my life was.”

Overcrowding
The auditors praised the efforts of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), which runs prisons and probation, in keeping inmates safe – despite overcrowding.

Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said it was important prisoners who breached bail or committed offences on bail knew they would be sent back inside.

He supported putting more minor offenders to work in the community on “not very pleasant” tasks that had “an element” of rehabilitation, to free more space in jails.

“It certainly doesn’t need to be a chain gang, it can be just a high-glow jacket that shows that this is community punishment taking place,” he said.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said achieving NOMS’ goal of reducing reoffending by short-sentenced prisoners was “challenging” because so many prisoners spent so few weeks inside.

“However, it is reasonable to expect progress towards that goal. More coherent plans for prisoners, tailored to reducing their risk of reoffending, would be a good first step,” he said.

Phil Wheatley, director general of the NOMS, said he welcomed the report and would take the recommendations forwards.

‘Damning indictment’
Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “The revolving door of prison and crime costs the taxpayer billions and does little or nothing to reduce offending.

“The evidence is clear that community penalties, treatment for addicts, mental healthcare and sorting out housing and employment all work better than a short prison sentence.”

Jon Collins, of the Criminal Justice Alliance, said rather than spending money on a “futile attempt” to make short sentences work, the government should focus on keeping people out of jail to free up space and resources to better rehabilitate those who needed to be inside.

The Tories said the report was a “damning indictment of Labour’s prison failure” and pledged to introduce a “rehabilitation revolution”.

janchavarie Economic Issues, Re-offending, United Kingdom

As recently as eight months ago, Muskegon Correctional Facility held more than 1,300 inmates. Today, the count is zero. As reported in the Muskegon Chronicle.

The last Michigan inmates were bused out last week to other prisons in the state, making room for the arrival of 1,000 inmates from Pennsylvania.

Without the Pennsylvania deal, the 36-year-old facility would have closed in January, with the loss of up to 175 jobs.

As it is, all employees remain at work — even during the vacant interim, according to state Corrections Department spokesman John Cordell. Workers are making the prison “site ready” to meet Pennsylvania specifications, he said.

Cordell said the first Pennsylvania prisoners would arrive “in the next couple weeks” but declined to be more specific, citing security concerns. He said they would likely arrive at a rate of one busload or about 50 inmates per day, taking a month or so to reach the full complement.

“Pennsylvania and Michigan have worked very well together in this transition, and we look forward to supporting them as they transition into something new to their department, which is housing prisoners off site,” Cordell said.

For several years about a decade ago, Michigan exported some of its state prisoners to Virginia facilities to deal with overcrowding.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections announced Dec. 21 it would send 1,000 inmates to the Muskegon prison by February.

The inmates being selected for transfers are those who have less than three years to serve on their sentences, have no medical or mental health issues and have few or no visitors, according to Pennsylvania’s corrections department.

That’s enough to keep the prison open and save the 175 jobs that would have been eliminated by now. The 1,328-bed, medium-security prison was set to close in January as Michigan reduces its statewide prison population through earlier paroles and fewer prison returns for parole violators.

The deal isn’t for a set duration, but it’s expected to keep MCF operating at least through the end of 2013 and possibly longer.

Under the deal, Pennsylvania pays Michigan $62 per inmate per day to house its inmates, with the Michigan Department of Corrections running and staffing the prison. The deal is expected to net Michigan an average daily “profit” of $2.15 for each inmate at current operating costs because it costs the state only $59.85 per inmate per day to house an inmate.

The Michigan corrections department had said the prison’s closing would eliminate up to two-thirds of the 264 jobs at MCF, both corrections officers and other staff. Some of the expected layoffs would have been at Muskegon’s other two prisons — Earnest C. Brooks and West Shoreline — because MCF corrections officers have seniority-based “bumping” rights into those prisons.

janchavarie Economic Issues, Michigan

Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s decision to halt construction of a new Great Falls Youth Transition Center will not have a major effect on the existing program, a corrections official said. News from the Great Falls Tribune.

Steve Gibson, administrator of the Montana Department of Corrections Youth Services Division, said the agency will continue to run the program out of the rented residential home that it has used for more than a decade.

Earlier this year the Legislature appropriated $1.31 million to upgrade the prerelease-style program for juvenile offenders. The current facility on 3rd Avenue South is a converted former private home, which the state leases for $36,500 per year.

Schweitzer announced late last month that he was ordering the agency to hold off on building the new facility as part of his plan to save the state money. However, because the new building was funded through the state’s long-range building program and not the state general fund, Schweitzer needs the Legislature’s approval before the savings can be transferred to the general fund.

During the last legislative session, agency officials told lawmakers that the current building doesn’t meet local and state building regulations and that it needs to be replaced. The plan for a new facility included replacing the 3,600-square-foot existing home with a 4,600-square-foot state-owned building.

Of the $1.31 million the Legislature appropriated for the project, about $60,000 already was spent on architects hired to design the new facility.

Gibson said the department temporarily reduced the number of individuals on probation using the facility and modified the existing house to meet some of the building code concerns. Still, the new building would be a better long-term option for the program, he said.

“It’s an older residential house that obviously does not ideally meet the needs of a facility of this nature,” Gibson said. “With the new facility, we would have had such things as cameras on the outside for security (and) an alarm system for the windows. It would have been more of a residential placement center that would be better designed to meet the needs for these kids.”

The Great Falls Youth Transition Center is the only program of its kind in the state. It serves as a stop-over for troubled youth who recently were released from one of the state’s two juvenile detention facilities.

“Initially, it was for kids who it was difficult to find other placements for when they came out of either Pine Hills or Riverside (youth correctional facilities),” Gibson said. “It kind of operated in the sense of a half-way house.”

He said the center recently has served more like a “short-term revocation center.” In that capacity, the center takes in youths who have “slipped up” while in placement elsewhere, Gibson said.

“We can place them in the Great Falls Youth Transition Center for a period of time with certain sanctions, more restrictions, more intense counseling and more checking as far as (urinary analysis), etc. If they continue to progress and the other placement is still available, then we can transition them out,” Gibson said.

The program has operated in Great Falls in one form or another since 1970, Gibson said, and will continue to do so, with or without the new building.

“The program will continue,” Gibson said. “Hopefully if things become better economically, this can still go forward.”

janchavarie Economic Issues, Juvenile Justice, Montana

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday that the state could save $1 billion by building and operating prisons in Mexico to house undocumented felons who are currently imprisoned in California. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The governor floated the idea during an appearance at the Sacramento Press Club in response to a question about controlling state spending. His speech came on the same day that changes in prisoner parole and credits for time served took effect.

“We pay them to build the prisons down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison. … And all this, it would be half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons,” Schwarzenegger said, predicting it would save the state $1 billion that could be spent on higher education.

About 19,000 of the state’s 171,000 prisoners are illegal immigrants, according to the most recent statistics available online. The state spends more than $8 billion a year on the prison system.

Aaron McLear, spokesman for the governor, said later that Schwarzenegger’s comments did not represent a concrete proposal, but “a concept somebody mentioned to him” and he could not say where the governor came up with the $1 billion figure.

The governor’s statements seemed to catch his prisons chief off guard. Matthew Cate, secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said it was not a proposal the department was pursuing and he assumed it was an extension of Schwarzenegger’s call to privatize some of the state’s prison operations.

Privatizing Prisons
In his State of the State speech earlier this month, Schwarzenegger called for allowing private companies to compete with state-run prisons, which, he said, could save billions of dollars.

After the governor spoke Monday, Cate said the department has not reviewed or analyzed the Mexico proposal and said the department has no projections of how much money the state could save. He also acknowledged it could raise a host of jurisdictional and other issues.

“It would probably be complicated, but without looking into it yet, I’m not sure,” said Cate, who was present at the Press Club event.

California is currently under a federal court order to reduce its prison population by 40,000 inmates over the next two years. A federal judge installed a receiver in 2006 to oversee inmate health care in state prisons, finding that substandard care led to the death of about one prisoner per week.

Donald Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, which sued the state on behalf of prisoners, said the governor’s idea was “not very practical.”

“It would be like the state of California having a separate island of its own government in Mexico. It just seems like that would be impossible,” Specter said.

The governor’s idea also drew criticism from the prison guards union.

“There are a number of reasons why it not only won’t work, but shouldn’t work,” said Lance Corcoran, spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. “There is no obligation from a sovereign nation to incarcerate and rehabilitate individuals who have not committed crimes within their borders.”

Nearly any change in how California manages its prisons spurs controversy.

On Monday, some lawmakers were criticizing laws on parole and sentencing reductions that took effect this week. The changes, which were part of last year’s budget negotiations, will reduce the state’s prison population by about 6,500 inmates this year, according to the corrections department.

Changes criticized
That will mean people who are regarded as low-risk parolees will not be monitored by a parole agent and prisoners can earn additional credits for time served in prison, which would reduce their sentences.

Those changes were criticized by both Republicans and Democrats, including Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-Torrance (Los Angeles County), who is a candidate for state attorney general. Lieu co-authored legislation introduced Monday to require local authorities to be involved in those parole decisions and for the state to notify local officials when people are given early release into their jurisdictions. He said the changes threaten public safety.

“I guarantee you crime will increase and there will be more victims of crime,” he said.

Cate disputed that assessment, predicting the number of people who commit crimes again and return to prison would fall, as they would earn credits for completing programs that prisons officials say reduce recidivism.

janchavarie Economic Issues

California will begin to reduce its prison population by about 6,500 inmates over the next year under a state law that takes effect Monday. Story published in The Washington Post.

The bill was signed as part of last year’s state budget package. Under it, early release credits for inmates who complete educational and vocational programs will be expanded, letting more inmates leave prison earlier.

At the same time, the state will stop its monitoring of low-level offenders after their release. That is designed to reduce the number of parolees returned to prison, essentially because the state will not know if they are violating the terms of their parole.

Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate told The Associated Press on Thursday that the law will let parole agents concentrate on more dangerous ex-convicts.

Agents will be responsible for supervising an average of 48 parolees instead of the current 70 because the law ends California’s practice of automatically putting every released convict on three years of parole.

Ex-convicts deemed less dangerous or less likely to commit new crimes will not be monitored at all, although they still can be searched without a warrant.

The reduced caseload will let the state more intensively watch gang members, sex offenders and violent felons, using lessons it learned from its failure to catch Jaycee Dugard’s accused kidnappers, Cate said. Parole agents have been faulted for failing to learn that paroled sex offender Phillip Garrido was hiding the young woman in his backyard for nearly 20 years.

“We’re going back to the time when the parole officer not only has time to be a cop, but add that social worker factor,” Cate said in a telephone interview. “We could see the recidivism rate actually go down in California, so that’s the great hope.”

Groups representing crime victims and the union representing Los Angeles police officers criticized the new law.

“California has decided to begin jeopardizing public safety with no perceivable financial benefit,” said Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul M. Weber in a statement.

He argued that despite the short-term financial gain, an increase in crime will cost the state and victims more in the long run.

Cate acknowledged some unsupervised ex-felons will inevitably commit serious crimes after their release. But he said residents will be safer in general because parole agents will be able to concentrate on higher-risk parolees.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the law in October. Finance officials estimated Thursday the measure will save the state about $500 million its first full year.

janchavarie Budgets, California, Overcrowding

The Re-entry Program is crucial to stop the revolving door for prison, but state budget cuts are forcing the Kansas Department of Corrections to cut those programs. “The Re-entry Program and Parole Services are what make our communities safe,” Sharidi Blackwood, Re-entry Program Director, said. News from KTKA.

Blackwood said they’ve had to cut staff and leave positions open, which gives Parole Officers like Donnie Hibler more work and fewer resources to work with. “When we don’t have the resources or the funds the staff to meet all those needs it becomes pretty scary, and it becomes a real safety issue and that is our number one concern,” Blackwood said.

Missy Woodward is a Program Consultant who works with mentally ill prisoners. “A lot of the mental health cases came to us with the shut down of the Topeka State Hospital,” Woodward said.

“The prisons are the new state hospitals now,” Parole Officer Hibler said.

If Missy can’t find the resources, like medication and housing for these mentally ill prisoners, crimes will continue to occur. “It’s going to impact the safety of the community, I hate to say when people get desperate they get desperate,” Woodward said.

Kelli Martinez’s job is to help people coming out of prison find work, but with a failing economy that has made her part of the re-entry program tough, “We see a lot of the jobs that used to be the given, that they could just walk into those aren’t so available now either,” Martinez said.

So with a troubled economy, and cuts to the Kansas Department of Corrections, it leaves many who work with offenders scared what will happen next. “Our biggest concern is safety for the community,” Blackwood said.

The Kansas Department of Corrections staff said they will continue to rely on other community programs for help. They said they have to get creative to get prisoners the help they need.

janchavarie Budgets, Kansas, Re-Entry

In its final report, the SAGE Commission calls for state government to trade off the high-cost Ely State Prison and Lovelock Correctional Center to a private firm that would build new prisons for the state near Reno and Las Vegas News reported by the Ely News.

The Saving and Government Efficiency Commission offered 44 recommendations to save Nevada money in the final report. Most of the recommendations already have been considered by the Legislature, but a handful, including the prison closure proposals, are new.

The bipartisan commission, created by Gov. Jim Gibbons in June 2008, has met monthly and developed recommendations considered by the governor and the Legislature.

“I am very pleased with our work,” panel Chairman Bruce James, a former U.S. printer, said Thursday. “Government works incrementally. Making big changes is tough to do overnight. The Legislature is going to be hard-pressed to save money in coming years. We think we have made recommendations that they will have to consider.”

During the 2009 Legislature, lawmakers approved changes to the state retirement and health care systems along the lines proposed by the SAGE Commission, saving the state more than $100 million. About half of its early recommendations were approved during the session.

Former Assemblyman David Goldwater, D-Las Vegas, a commission member, echoed James’ view that the commission was productive. He said Democrats and Republicans agreed on almost every recommendation.

“A lot of our recommendations were common sense,” he said. “But citizens should be confident that we found there isn’t any gigantic waste in state spending. The state isn’t buying $900 hammers. We didn’t find any horrible inefficiencies that could cure the state’s budget ills.”

As far as trading rural prisons for ones in urban areas, Goldwater said, governors and legislators in the past looked at constructing prisons in rural areas as a way to bolster their economies. “But it costs the state extra money to have rural prisons,” Goldwater said.

In its report, the commission found Ely and Lovelock have higher operational costs and at times cannot find needed employees. Inadequate hospitals exist in the two communities, and offenders are far from courts that handle their appeals.

Other recommendations include:

• The state’s information technology department should come up with a common system for state e-mail and Web sites.
• The Nevada Department of Transportation should consider closing some highway maintenance stations and outsourcing some maintenance responsibilities.

Gibbons praised the commission, and added, “Just as SAGE commissioners did in their work, we hope our elected officials can now set aside their partisan differences to put the public’s interest first.”

James said commissioners could have continued to meet monthly through June but believed they had completed their task so they decided to submit the final report early.

janchavarie Budgets, Economic Issues, Nevada

Frustrated Board of Corrections members on Friday criticized what they called a lack of interest among lawmakers to fund the state prison system. News reported in the Tulsa World.

The Department of Corrections plans to begin furloughing all of its 4,514 employees starting in March to deal with budget cuts.

Some 119 employees took an early buyout offer as the agency worked to trim its budget, DOC Director Justin Jones said.

And if his budget is further cut by the minimum 7.5 percent he was told to expect in the next fiscal year, Jones said, the Corrections Department also will have to lay off 459 employees.

“That is not crying wolf,” Jones said during a regular Board of Corrections meeting at the Lexington Assessment and Reception Center.

The agency also may close some prisons by increasing capacity at others, he said.

State agencies have been told to reduce their budgets as a result of declining revenue.

The cuts had been 5 percent starting in August but rose to 10 percent for December and January. Assuming that the cuts revert to 5 percent in February and stay there until the end of the fiscal year on June 30, the agency will have cut $41 million from a $503 million budget, Jones said.

Since July 1, the Department of Correction has added 709 inmates, DOC chief of operations Ken Klinger said.

The prison system is operating at 100 percent capacity, Jones said.

The board’s suggestions on ways to curb the growing prison population and reduce costs don’t seem to interest lawmakers or state leaders, Corrections Board member David Henneke said.

Board member Robert Rainey said he was “surprised, shocked and dismayed” by the response the agency has gotten from the Legislature.

He said sentencing reform will come only after a federal judicial order requires lawmakers to spend money.

“The Legislature wants to incarcerate low-risk offenders and not pay for it,” Rainey said. “It is shameful. I am embarrassed.”

The Department of Corrections can’t do more with less forever, he said.

“At the end of the day, it is a failure of our leadership,” Rainey said.

Board member Ted Logan said he envisions a scenario in which someone is hurt or killed as a result of the cuts, followed by finger-pointing.

“I hope something gives before it reaches that point,” he said.

janchavarie Budgets, Oklahoma

For the past 10 years, Randy Bland has held a job that might make some people nervous.He oversees the mill and cabinetry class at Sierra Conservation Center, a program that teaches inmates the basics of the cabinet-making trade. News reported by the Union Democrat.

That’s 27 felons bearing power tools. “I love it,” Bland, 51, said, standing in the kitchen that his wife, Susan, designed and he created in their Sonora home. “It’s a satisfying thing. I’d do it until I retired.”

However, deep cuts in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation budget mean that this, a graphic design class and a print shop all will be axed from the SCC curriculum by the end of January.

The Department of Corrections saw a $1.2 billion budget cut in 2009, forcing the department to pick certain programs to be reworked or discarded, according to spokeswoman Peggy Bengs.

Adult programs and rehabilitation programs took the brunt of it, as two-thirds of their budgets disappeared. Cutting certain classes, like mill and cabinetry, on a statewide scale saves the department $250 million, Bengs said.

“The state is emphasizing programs that reduce recidivism,” Bengs said. “We’re looking at vocational programs linked to job market demands that take 12 months to complete. Those reduce recidivism by 9 percent.”

The programs that survived budget cuts tended to be those that provide certification on top of satisfying the job market in the area where prisoners spend their parole periods.

The state prioritizes programs that can provide those certificates, Bengs said. Those include the automotive or welding programs, among others.

In Bland’s view, the mill and cabinetry program provides his students not only skills that can be used in a number of areas, but also valuable life skills that prepare people who haven’t had normal social interaction for the workplace.

“It can be tough,” he said. “You have a small shop and a lot of people. Personalities can clash.”

And part of the training is learning to work with people of different races, personality types and backgrounds. Learning a trade teaches them confidence, he said, a commodity a person doesn’t have a lot of when they are released with the stigma of having served time.

Bland created the class using state-mandated curriculum and textbooks, but put a heavy dash of his own hands-on style in to make sure his students learned. Students who had been around longer were put in charge of projects and given a team of less-experienced students to encourage peer teaching, Bland said.

He was there to supervise, answer questions and solve problems, both with the cabinets and between the inmates. He also made sure the shop had what it needed to be a good learning environment.

At this point, he said, the shop is state-of-the-art.

“It’s a wonderful shop, the state has been kind to me,” Bland said. “They put you in there and you make it what it is. You decide what to buy, what kind of machinery and how you run it.”

To get some of the supplies, Bland wrote grants and lobbied for resources.

The happy beneficiaries of the program include not just prisoners, but also budget-weary state and local agencies that need the services the program provides but can’t afford — like the Mi-Wuk-Sugar Pine Fire Protection District.

Fire Chief Randy Miller had a problem. The department needed a new firehouse, but it had a $20,000 budget to create a multi-purpose 1,300-square-foot building.

“You pay for stuff and then you blink your eyes and that budget is gone,” Miller said.

By using Bland’s shop, the fire department only had to pay for the materials needed to make the cabinets for the kitchen, saving a hefty sum of money for quality work, Miller said.

“For what it cost us, there is no way I could get this stuff, no way,” he said. “We had them put a cabinet in that we’ll put a counter top on. When it came back, we had to nudge that thing in there. It fit perfectly.”

Now that the program is ending, Bland is already getting calls for cabinet work in the county. He owned a business, Precision Woodworking, in the area from 1982 to 2000 when he quit to work in the prisons. But he’s not sure if he wants to launch a new business at this point in his life.

He doesn’t have a shop, and the shop at the prison will be dismantled. Equipment that can’t be used by the Education Department as a result of reductions will be given away to other institutions that request the equipment, Bengs said.

“If I’m laid off, I’m going to have to do something,” Bland said. “It’ll be low key.”

janchavarie Budgets, California, Inmate Programs

Prison officials hope a federal grant to reduce repeat offenses will help the South Dakota Department of Corrections control inmate population growth in a tight budget year. News from the Rapid City Journal.

Gov. Mike Rounds’ proposed 2011 budget is about $1 million lower than the DOC’s request. The agency asked for $108,069,335 based on projected prison numbers through June 2012.

Corrections Secretary Tim Reisch said the $106,982,478 budget forwarded by the governor will be enough to cover prison operations for the next 18 months. That’s dependent in part on controlling recidivism with officers through the federally funded Second Chance/Re-entry program in Sioux Falls, Rapid City and Pierre.

The governor’s budget projects only 157 more inmates in 2011 than 2009. “There isn’t a lot of wiggle room,” Reisch said.

Until 2007, South Dakota’s prison population increased by about 100 prisoners every year. The population dropped in 2007 and 2008.

“We had back-to-back reductions, which is really unprecedented since we’ve been keeping statistics,” Reisch said. “Forever, we’d been going up.”

The drop preceded a national trend. Earlier this month, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that the nation’s prison population grew at a slower pace in 2008 than it had for eight years.

In South Dakota, however, the population began to climb again in 2009. As of November, there were 3,387 adult inmates in the state, up 43 from the end of 2008.

If the numbers grow too quickly or unpredictable factors such as high-cost medical procedures for inmates drive up the budget, Reisch might need to ask the Legislature for more money. “There are a lot of things out there that can break the budget,” he said.

The DOC will use $749,749 from the federal government every year for the next three years to pay the Second Chance officers, Reisch said. The new employees will help coordinate the placement of paroled prisoners in jobs, apartments or substance abuse programs.

The extra help could make a difference, according to Tom Cihak, a member of the Board of Pardons and Parole. Parole officers can oversee 60 to 70 parolees at a time.

“It would definitely help to have more people,” Cihak said.

An inmate with a steady job and stable housing situation has a better chance at returning to society as well, he said.

“It’s expensive to house them here, and they do a lot better on the outside if they’re ready to be there,” he said. The tight corrections budget for South Dakota still is more manageable than the situation in some other states.

Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Ohio are looking at sentencing reform to reduce the amount of time prisoners are held. Others have considered early releases for nonviolent offenders.

The last time South Dakota commuted sentences en masse was 1986, when then-Gov. Bill Janklow released 36 people in response to overcrowding.

Reisch doesn’t expect such a move in the near future.

“I could not tell you that we’d never entertain the thought, but the governor’s proposal doesn’t have any early releases,” Reisch said.

janchavarie Budgets, South Dakota

As of mid-December, the Shawnee County Department of Corrections had spent $141,856 on medications, including $63,869 in psychotropic drugs. News reported by the Topeka-Capital Journal.

The amount of money spent per month has decreased in the past few months, said Brian Cole, deputy director of the Shawnee County Department of Corrections. However, at times, the county jail has had one of the highest bills for psychotropic drugs in the Midwest.

Sixteen percent of inmates at the county jail suffer from mental illness, and 45 percent of the money spent in 2009 on medications has been to treat those individuals.

Crisis Intervention Team is a program that Shawnee County began implementing a few years ago to try to divert people with mental illness to community-based treatment facilities instead of jail.

“A jail is not a place to stabilize those with mental illness,” Cole said. “We are not a mental health facility.”

CIT was started after Greg Eilert, 45, who was schizophrenic, was shot and killed by Topeka police in August 2006 while in his car near S.W. 29th and Fairlawn. The shooting was reviewed and found to be justified. “His family became very motivated,” Cole said.

Greg Eilert’s mother and sister often share Greg’s story with officers who are receiving CIT training. About 30 percent of all law enforcement officers in Shawnee County have voluntarily received the training, including corrections officers who work at the jail. “We need to continue to build the pool of officers,” Cole said.

The training has several goals, Cole said, including to ensure officers’ safety, reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and increase collaboration among area agencies.

The training is usually 40 hours long and is offered in Shawnee County at the Topeka Police Department twice per year. The next CIT training is in April.

“Our main focus is to diffuse the situation,” Cole said. “We see the need. Topeka, Kansas, and Shawnee County have a high population of people with severe mental illness.”

Usually people with mental illness who are arrested are arrested for minor crimes, such as trespassing, public intoxication or drug-related offenses, he said. Every year, about 800,000 people with severe mental illness are incarcerated in U.S. jails.

At the Shawnee County Jail, a person is evaluated upon their arrival to find out if he or she has a mental illness. Once identified, the inmate meets with a member of the mental health team, which includes two social workers and a psychologist. David Coleman serves as the mental health team leader for Shawnee County. He has been in his field since 1973, he said.

Although the Shawnee County Department of Corrections oversees the mental health team, Prison Health Services, a company made up of more than 3,800 professionals who work in jails, prisons and juvenile facilities nationwide, oversees medication dispensing and prison health. A registered nurse is on staff 24 hours at the jail.

Medication rounds are conducted in the morning, at noon and at bedtime, said Karen Marsh, PHS health services administrator. Inmates have illnesses ranging from severe depression to schizophrenia. Those with mental illness don’t fare well in the criminal justice system, Cole said. Oftentimes they are exploited or manipulated by other inmates, have difficulty coping and can’t make bail.

A U.S. Justice Department study found that 60 percent of people with mental illness in jail don’t get treatment, Cole said. The Shawnee County Jail works hard to make sure inmates get the help they need, the deputy director said. Statistics show the CIT program is working, Cole said.

Since the third quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009, only one person out of 134 calls to which CIT members responded went to jail.

“We are seeing an improvement,” Cole said. “What I want the public to understand is this is a much-needed resource.”

No money from the Shawnee County Department of Corrections goes into the program, Cole said. Volunteers do all of the training, too.

Topeka Police Chief Ron Miller said the CIT program is very valuable. He said the training is helpful because officers are the ones who have to determine if a person needs to be arrested or treated.

“The key for the police officer is assessing the needs of the person,” Miller said. “It is also key to recognize the need and know how to connect the person to the services they need.”

TOP 5 PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS ADMINISTERED
The top five psychotropic drugs administered by Prison Health Services at the Shawnee County Jail are:

1. Abilify, a medication used as an add-on treatment for depression, as well as for the treatment of schizophrenia and manic episodes.

2. Zyprexa, a medication used for the treatment of schizophrenia, acute manic and mixed episodes of bipolar disorder and maintenance treatment.

3. Seroquel, treats the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

4. Risperdal, used to treat schizophrenia and symptoms of bipolar disorder.

5. Geodon, a medicine for the treatment of acute manic or mixed episodes of bipolar disorder and for schizophrenia.

janchavarie Budgets, Inmate Health Care, KS Shawnee County

Here’s another person that isn’t all that fond of at least one aspect of Gov. Tim Kaine’s recently introduced budget proposal, as reported in The Washington Post.

Fairfax County Sheriff Stan G. Barry said the outgoing Democratic governor’s plan to rent 1,000 prison beds to other states to raise money is unfair to local sheriffs who are left stuck housing hundreds of state inmates in already crowded local jails waiting to be moved. “I’m very concerned,” he said. “We already have an additional burden.”

The Department of Corrections, the largest agency in the state, with more than 10,000 employees, expects to make up for $20 million in budget cuts by taking in 1,000 inmates from Pennsylvania sometime before February.

Barry said he understands that the state needs the money, but he called Kaine’s plan a “shell game” because the state is simply shifting the burden to local governments. As of last week, he said, the Fairfax jail was housing 135 inmate for the state (out of a total of 1,300).

Last summer, Kaine (D) also proposed accepting out-of-state prisoners, but abruptly halted the plan when sheriffs from the state’s most populous areas of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads objected. Virginia Beach Sheriff Paul J. Lanteigne sued the state.

Virginia pays sheriffs $14 a day to house each state inmate (though the actual cost can be as high as $125) while collecting much more from other states to house their prisoners. The agreement with Pennsylvania will bring in about $62 a day, according to Larry Traylor, a spokesman at the Department of Corrections.

Traylor said his department would probably have to lay off employees or close facilities if not for the out-of-state prisoners. “The current economic downturn has affected all of us and we continue to look for solutions that will benefit the Commonwealth,” he said.

As of last week, the state was housing 309 inmates from Wyoming, the Virgin Islands and from Hawaii, Traylor said. Virginia houses a total of 31,000 inmates at 44 facilities.

Traylor said he’s unaware of any specific concerns by local or regional jails, and that the overall number of state inmates at local jails have been reduced by almost 500 since May 2008. He said about 230 state inmates have actually been transferred back to local jails to rent out otherwise empty beds.

Virginia began housing inmates from other states in 1998 after the state built and expanded a dozen prisons after abolishing parole and enacting longer sentences for certain crimes.

Many human rights groups oppose the practice, arguing that the inmates suffer from a loss of training, rehabilitation and contact with family and friends. They also caution that moving offenders to a prison with new rules and with different types of inmates can lead to violence, as shown by riots in other prisons across the nation after out-of-state prisoners moved in.

Virginia largely abandoned the practice in 2004, saying the space was needed for a growing inmate population, several years after two Connecticut inmates died and human rights groups lodged complaints of excessive force.

Sheriffs have complained for at least three decades about the large number of state inmates in local jails, which are supposed to house defendants awaiting trial and those sentenced for minor crimes. They argue that the more dangerous inmates further crowd their jails and that the jails provide less access to rehabilitative and educational services.

Many sheriffs, including in Fairfax and Arlington counties, have sued the state to force officials to act. State law requires that felons sentenced to at least one year behind bars get transferred from local jails to state prisons within 60 days.

Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell (R) outright opposes Kaine’s proposed tax increase, but he declined to take a position on most of the governor’s proposed budget cuts and other revenues sources except to criticize trims to local law enforcement.

Under Kaine’s budget, sheriffs and local constitutional officiers will lose $270.5 million over the two years and local police will lose $73 million over two years.

janchavarie Budgets, VA Fairfax County, Virginia

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is trying to set a construction strategy based on what likely will be conflicting inmate population projections. Story from The Daily Reporter.

The first estimate predicts more inmates and recommends major renovation projects. The second projection, though not yet released, is expected to forecast the opposite.

“It’s one of the struggles we face,” said Earl Fischer, administrator of the department’s Division of Management Services. “We don’t have advance knowledge of what’s coming down the pike and with the fiscal challenges the state faces, we don’t have much flexibility in terms of growth.”

The Corrections Department next year will finish new projections based on legislation designed to reduce inmate populations at state prisons. If those projections show no growth or a decline in the population, Fischer said, the department can request less construction money in future state budgets.

But those projections would contradict a statewide, 10-year facility development plan Madison-based Mead & Hunt Inc. completed earlier this year. That plan recommends, among other things, $142 million worth of renovation work at the Green Bay Correctional Institution in Allouez. The renovation would add 250 cells to the complex.

“A good deal of the 10-year plan that was done for us was premised on a growing population,” Fischer said. “We’re working with the assumption that sentence reduction will put all plans to increase capacity” on hold.

It still is just an assumption based on inmate-related bills and an early-release provision in the 2009-11 state budget that could reduce the prison population statewide by about 3,000 inmates, said state Sen. Rob Cowles, R-Green Bay.

But, he said, there is no guarantee the inmate population will decline. It also is possible, he said, that future legislation could increase the population.

“We’re going to have to watch this carefully,” he said. “There are so many moving parts to this.”

A new governor could bring a new attitude toward prison population or Corrections Department spending, Fischer said, so the numbers the department can work with in 2010 might be meaningless in 2011.

“It would be safer to just go with the higher projections in the Mead & Hunt report,” he said. “But whether the state has the funds to support that is another issue. Right now, no one feels we have the luxury of doing expansions.”

Right now, the department is receiving only a fraction of the money it requests.

In the 2009-11 budget, Fischer said, the department requested about $250 million to finance projects at all of its prisons. The department, he said, received $30 million.

The lack of money, no matter what projections might show, illustrates the problem, Cowles said.

“How do we know we even have the money for the maintenance work they need?” he said. “The next couple budgets are going to be pure misery.”

Former judge state Rep. Fred Kessler, D-Milwaukee, said it behooves the Corrections Department to project a decline in population.

“So many of the decisions I made as a judge were based on what kind of offenders should be put in jail,” he said. “The thing is prisons and jails are self-fulfilling prophecies. The state has the power to control exiting, and now that we have a release mechanism, there are ways of dealing with overcrowding.”

But even without expansion there will be maintenance issues to deal with in Allouez and other prisons. Whether the prisons get that money, Fischer said, is up to lawmakers.

“It’s politics,” he said. “And it’s constantly subject to change.”

janchavarie Budgets, Wisconsin

For 2,000 male Pennsylvania prison inmates, this will be their last Christmas spent relatively close to home until at least 2013. Reported in the Philadelphia Daily News.

In February, the state Department of Corrections – for the first time – will begin shipping inmates to other states to ease record overcrowding in the 27-prison system, Susan McNaughton, a spokeswoman for the department, said yesterday.

The Muskegon (Mich.) Correctional Facility will get 1,000 inmates; another 1,000 will be sent to the Green Rock Correctional Center, in Chatham, Va., she said.

The transfers – a plan decried by inmate advocates in October, when the Daily News reported that prison officials were contemplating the moves – come as the state’s inmate population shows no sign of stabilizing or shrinking.

The system is designed to house about 44,000 inmates but now has more than 51,400, McNaughton said.

“This is a program to reduce the inmate population to a manageable number,” she said. “This is not about saving money.”

Still, the transfers will make a $5.1 million difference. The corrections department will pay Michigan and Virginia $62 per inmate, per day, for an annual cost of $45.2 million, she said. It costs about $69 per inmate, per day to house them in Pennsylvania medium-security prisons.

Corrections Secretary Jeffrey A. Beard made the decision in consultation with Gov. Rendell after Beard and his staff studied proposals from six states and visited several prisons.

Betty Jean Thompson, president of the state chapter of Citizens United to Rehabilitate Errants (CURE), called the decision “cruel and unusual” treatment of inmates and their families.

“I think that this is horrible,” said Thompson, who yesterday e-mailed a protest letter to state lawmakers and civil-rights and inmate activists. “I wish there had been a better way to solve this problem. I just can’t imagine what the families are going through knowing their loved ones are going to be shipped off.”

The Corrections Department said that video-conferencing hook-ups will be made available, but Thompson said that those are no substitute for in-person visits.

McNaughton said that she understood Thompson’s concerns but noted that overcrowded prisons lead to fights and other disruptions that may harm inmates.

“Our secretary is working to prevent these things from happening,” she said. “This is a last resort. It’s not something that we want to do, it’s something that we have to do to maintain safety and security.”

She said that inmates cannot refuse to be transferred but that only those who have received few or no family visits, who have at least three years remaining to serve and who are free of medical, mental and behavioral issues will be transferred.

Pennsylvania’s inmates in Virginia will be housed separately from other inmates. The Michigan facility, which had been slated to close, is empty.

The Corrections Department will send a staffer to both places to monitor contract compliance and to answer inmates’ concerns, McNaughton said.

Corrections officials hope to start bringing inmates back to the state by 2013, if four new prisons that have been approved are up and running.

janchavarie Budgets, Overcrowding, Pennsylvania

janchavarie Alabama, Budgets, Economic Issues

The Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC), Santiam Correctional Institution (SCI) in Salem, Ore., is implementing $1.85 million in facility enhancements designed to improve operations, comfort and efficiency in four buildings with approximately 96,000 square feet. Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management, will complete the work as a performance contract with the DOC. Schneider Electric guarantees that SCI will reduce its utility and labor costs by $335,000 annually when the project is completed in December 2009. News in Alternative Energy Resources.

SCI is a 400-bed minimum security facility that operates a community reintegration program that assigns inmates to supervised work crews in the community and provides other services for inmates prior to their release from prison. Due to code requirements to continuously staff the facility’s high pressure boilers, SCI’s operational costs to monitor the boilers exceeded all of the institution’s utility costs. The facility was also energy inefficient and lacked an effective building automation system.

“SCI initially received funding to replace the steam boilers to reduce operational costs. Schneider Electric found a way to keep the boilers and significantly reduce operational costs without sacrificing functionality of the system,” said Jim Poore, senior project manager, ODOC Facilities Services. “Schneider Electric’s solution was significantly less expensive than a wholesale replacement of the boiler system as originally planned. This allows the remaining dollars to fund numerous other improvements needed to reduce energy use, improve comfort and provide needed upgrades to the building to reduce the deferred maintenance that will have to be addressed in the future.”

Performance contracting offers many long-term benefits for correctional facilities, such as improved facility efficiency, occupant comfort, financial management and environmental protection. Typically, new, more efficient equipment and upgraded facility automation systems maximize energy efficiency and generate utility savings. Schneider Electric guarantees the amount of savings performance contracting projects will achieve and agrees to pay the difference if that amount is not realized.

To meet the challenge of reducing costs and improving efficiency, Schneider Electric applied a variety of energy conservation measures. First, engineers re-evaluated the plan to remove the two functional steam boilers that were in excellent condition. They determined that by reducing the pressure on the boilers from 45 to 14 PSI, the facility could still get the heating it needed and eliminate the need for continual staffing. Next, Schneider Electric examined the building management system, which had been abandoned because of age and missing hardware, leaving the staff to manually adjust valves and turn fans on and off. With no way to utilize the mechanical system to bring in cool air at night and noninsulated metal frame windows, the building quickly warmed up in the summer, with temperatures often rising to 110 degrees. Through this project, Schneider Electric will significantly reduce the peak temperatures in the summer by upgrading to a web-based direct digital control (DDC) control system, reducing lighting loads with lighting controls and retrofitting fixtures, installing modern thermal windows, and adding insulation and circulation in the attic. The staff will have full control and visibility of current conditions through the new control system. Schneider Electric partner Control Contractors, Inc. of Portland, Ore., will install a TAC I/A Series control system in the facility.

“Properly coordinating scheduling and necessary security are the biggest challenges to working in correctional facilities,” said Shon Anderson, vice president of Energy Solutions sales, Schneider Electric. “The nature of the facility and the fact that it must be operational and occupied 24/7 require that we must be careful to ensure that the work does not compromise security and has minimal disruption to the occupants.”

When the project is completed, not only will the SCI facility be more comfortable, but it will also be more efficient. Schneider Electric estimates that as a result of the reduction in energy use, 314 tons of carbon will not released. This is equivalent to planting 12,575 trees, taking 68 cars off the roads for one year, or making 41 houses carbon neutral.

janchavarie Economic Issues, Environment and Energy, Oregon

A law intended to save taxpayers $6 million by lopping time off the sentences of Oregon’s nonviolent prisoners has unwittingly opened freedom’s door early to hundreds of violent inmates. News from the Oregonian.

They include Troy Lee Hischar, who fired a bullet so close to his ex-girlfriend’s skull that it clipped off a tuft of hair; Raul Peña-Jimenez, who gave a 16-year-old girl drugs and alcohol before sexually assaulting her; and Joseph Duane Betts, a convicted child molester who exposed himself to two boys.

Nearly 800 of the 2,397 inmates approved for reduced sentences were sent to prison for crimes as serious as robbery, arson and attempted murder or had previous convictions for crimes against people, The Oregonian found in an examination of state corrections data.

The new law, which passed as part of budget cuts by the Legislature, made thieves, drug dealers and other lower-risk prisoners eligible for a 10 percent reduction in their sentences.

But lawmakers acknowledge they left more than a dozen serious crimes off the list of offenses that disqualify inmates from reduced sentences. So prisoners could get extra time off for crimes such as assaulting police officers, sexually abusing children or committing certain kinds of arson or robbery.

“I call it an oversight,” Prozanski says. “Just like any major piece of legislation, we have now realized there are some crimes we intended to include that we are going to include.”

Dozens of prisoners qualified for early release even though they were accused of crimes committed in prison, such as attacking corrections staffers, possessing dangerous weapons and downloading child pornography on a prison computer.

The law also does not consider inmates’ previous histories of violence, and it opens the door to those serving time for multiple offenses during a violent crime. For example, a carjacker who completes a sentence for armed robbery can then win early release on a consecutive sentence for stealing a car.

“They need to repeal this law,” says Dean Gushwa,  Umatilla County’s district attorney. “I can’t believe that they ever intended for this law to shave time off sentences for violent offenders.”

Key architects of the statute, Prozanski and then-Rep. Chip Shields, D-Portland, say the law has generally played out as expected. The average inmate to win a sentence reduction gets out 59 days early, saving taxpayers $84 a day. However, Shields acknowledges, some of them are hardened criminals.

“There are very few saints in prison,” says Shields, now a state senator, “which is why this can’t happen in an easy way.”

Prosecutors and victims rights advocates say the new law has freed violent criminals, clogged court dockets, reopened wounds for crime victims and appears to be a sneaky way of tampering with mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

Much more to read on the Oregonian.

janchavarie Early Release, Economic Issues, Oregon

The state is recommending that a minimum-security prison in Cheshire be closed, a move that would have been unheard of during the tough-on-crime days of the mid-1990s. News reported by the Hartford Courant.

The state Department of Correction wants to close the Webster Correctional Institution, which holds about 220 criminals near the end of their sentences.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell sought the department’s recommendation as a way to cut expenses while the government tries to recover from the worst economic downturn in decades. Closing the Cheshire prison would save an estimated $3.4 million a year when the state’s budget deficit projection for the current fiscal year is approaching $550 million.

The recommendation marks a sharp departure from the days when Connecticut was building prisons in the 1980s and rapidly expanding the space to house convicted criminals. No prisons have been closed in recent state history, and the Cheshire recommendation stirred up some controversy Tuesday.

The prison guards’ union calls it a bad idea, even though it would not cause layoffs.

“Closing Webster will put greater strain on other overburdened facilities and services,” said Dwayne Bickford, president of AFSCME Local 387. “Our correctional employees walk Connecticut’s toughest beat, and we will continue to do everything in our power to keep Connecticut safe. Shutting down a prison like Webster is ill-advised. It will not improve public safety.”

Rell can enforce a prison closure under her own authority and cannot be blocked by the legislature, which, in passing a state budget in September, directed her to find millions of dollars in savings in the Department of Correction.

Rell had ordered the department to recommend a prison for closing — a controversial step because it involves moving both criminals as well as staff members who range from first-year union members to experienced supervisors. About 120 state employees work at the prison — including maintenance staff, teachers, addiction counselors and others.

“We face an extraordinarily difficult budget situation — a challenge unlike any we have known in modern memory,” Rell said in a statement Tuesday. “The state prison population is currently about 18,300, down from nearly 19,900 in February 2008. While other states — including states facing even more severe budget problems than our own — are being forced to build new prisons, we can make the most of our successes by building on these achievements.”

“Any decision such as this must always be made with public safety foremost in our minds,” Rell said. “The recommendation from DOC notes that closing a minimum security facility is easier to accomplish because any inmates that need to be moved can be shifted to higher-security locations if necessary. The closure can also be accomplished without laying off any of the dedicated DOC staff, who perform one of the most dangerous — yet most necessary — tasks in state government.”

Parts of Webster, which opened in October 1990, are already closed. The state shut down two of its four units in the past year.

The remaining 220 or so inmates will need to be transferred within the system that includes 17 other prisons.

Webster is classified as a Level 2 facility. Level 1 is reserved for released criminals who are placed in the community. Level 5 is maximum security.

The recommendation would keep open the 110-inmate Webster Annex, which handles inmates who clean highways during the day and return to the annex at night.

Although the recommendation calls for the prison to be closed, Rell has said that it would be reopened if necessary — due to a jump in crime or a higher level of convictions. The prison shutdown would be accomplished over eight to 10 weeks, according to acting Correction Commissioner Brian K. Murphy.

State Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven, one of the legislature’s leading authorities on criminal justice, said that the shutdown should not be difficult.

“It’s like four big, open rooms with bunk beds,” Lawlor said. “There are no cells in there. People find that hard to picture. No prison cells at all. No bars. No nothing. Minimum security.”

If the state’s super-max prison in Somers is filled with the worst of the worst, Lawlor said, then “Webster is filled with the least of the least.”

The closure is possible because the number of inmates has plummeted since a peak that followed the slayings of three members of the Petit family in Cheshire on July 23, 2007.

The state’s prison population exploded by about 1,200 after Rell froze the parole system following the Petit case.

It reached an all-time high of 19,894 inmates on Feb. 1, 2008, according to the Department of Correction.

Two longtime criminals who were out on parole at the time now face the death penalty if convicted in the slayings, which prompted the legislature to make changes in the state criminal justice system in a special session.

Rell said that the state’s full-time parole board is operating efficiently now and that some re-entry programs have permitted criminals to get out of prison.

janchavarie Budgets, Connecticut

Shrinking revenues from federal prisoners in the jail will be one of the budget challenges facing Blount County in the coming fiscal years. Still, county officials expect to hold property taxes at current levels in the next budget. Reported in the Daily Times.

When the commissioners shelved a proposal to build a new jail pod back in January, time began running out on a source of revenue the county has depended upon for years to subsidize jail expenses — the housing of federal prisoners.

Having already lost state certification of the jail because of overcrowding, Sheriff James Berrong made the only choice left to him, reducing the population of federal prisoners by roughly half.

“This time last year, we had about 180 federal inmates that were generating revenue for the county,” he said, adding the jail now housed about 91. “That’s going to impact the revenue the county has. … We’re talking about a lot of money, around $5,000 a day.”

The daily rate that the U.S. Marshals Service pays to house federal inmates in the Blount County Jail is $58.50 per inmate. Depending on whom you ask, the sheriff or County Finance Director Dave Bennett, revenue from housing federal prisoners during the current fiscal year will be about $1.5 to $2 million less than previous years, but, because the county had already built in reduced revenue estimates in the budget, the actual shortfall will only be about $500,000.

“We’ll have more than enough turnback to cover that,” Bennett said. “On next year’s budget, we’ll have to bump that (revenue) number down. I don’t feel like we need to go in and reduce the budget because we can manage that from an administrative standpoint and make sure the bottom line is not a negative.”

Slashing the number of federal prisoners housed locally has resulted in the jail being recertified by the state.

On Nov. 30, 2008, there were 443 prisoners housed in the jail — 164 federal, 66 state and 213 local. About half of the state prisoners were supposed to be in state custody but there were no available beds in state prisons. The jail is only certified for 350.

On Nov. 17, 2009, there were 380, 91 being federal inmates. About 40 were state prisoners. Although this still technically exceeds the population cap in the jail, the state allows a loophole.

“The state inmates don’t count against our bed count, so if we have 40 Tennessee Department of Corrections inmates (out of 390), for their purposes, we only have 350 inmates,” Berrong said. “They can’t leave their inmates there and use that as a tool to decertify us.”

The number of state prisoners in the jail is also declining, although Berrong said housing them is a net loss for the county and that the reduction in numbers would not hurt county revenues. The state only pays counties $35 per inmate per day to house its prisoners.

janchavarie Budgets, Federal Payments, TN Blount County

With fewer prisoners, the Anoka County closed its medium security prison, reducing its budget by $400,000 so far. Story in the Star Tribune.

Despite a record level of human service caseloads, Anoka County has reduced its budget by $400,000 since September by closing its medium security prison and transferring inmates to Sherburne County, the county’s head of finances said Tuesday.

“We’re going to bring in a budget lower than September,” said Cevin Petersen, the county’s division manager of finance and central services.

Said County Administrator Terry Johnson: “A reduced levy still may not make people happy. But this will make them happier.”

Petersen said officials’ goal is to keep county-related service taxes to an average of less than $10 per household, or under $1 a month. Next month, the county board will be asked to scrutinize a prospective budget that meets those goals., Petersen said.

The real challenge, he said, is seeing whether a “socially conscious” county can meet the human-service demands that continue to rise as the economy remains in shambles.

“Look, you only have so much money,” he said. “How are you going to get things done?”

Closing the medium-security correctional center should save the county $650,000 annually, said Jerry Soma, manager of the county’s Human Services division. Much of that will go back to the general fund, he said.

Anoka County already had contracts for 25 beds at the jail in Elk River, to avoid overflow, before the agreement this summer to send more inmates to Sherburne County. The medium-security section of the center in Lino Lakes was rarely more than half full. With adult prisoners moved to Sherburne County, the facility in Lino Lakes can be used for juveniles or other purposes, Soma explained at the time the counties reached agreement.

The county is also relying on federal stimulus money, which helped it survive state cuts and now is being saved for future shortfalls, Soma said.

But Soma is also aware of the strain of the economy on everyday lives. He said his division is not planning to hold additional positions vacant — a tactic that has helped the county avoid massive layoffs.

janchavarie Economic Issues, MN Anoka County