TOO MANY INMATES, TOO FEW DOLLARS

Deficit Sparks Debate On Low Risk Prisoners

Nearly 30 percent of Wisconsin's 21,000-plus prison population is behind
bars for non-violent crimes including drug possession and sales, property
crimes and fraud, an analysis by the Oshkosh Northwestern found.

Many are repeat offenders, although a significant number of those serving
time for drug offenses are first-time convicted felons.

Now, as the state faces a $3 billion-plus state deficit, the percentage of
inmates doing prison time for non-violent offenses is adding fuel to
discussion of ways to stem the rate at which the state is locking up offenders.

Wisconsin spends $846 million per year on the prison system, or about 7
percent of its annual budget. In 1995, the state spent just $337 million.

The spending reflects prison population that rose from 6,000 inmates in
1987 to a 21,554 inmates as of Friday, and it underlines a growing debate
about whether prison is the best - or even an effective - punishment and
rehabilitation vehicle for many of those behind bars.

Walter Dickey, a former head of the state Department of Corrections and now
a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the issue
comes down to a question of what "gives us the most safety and the most
justice."

For many offenders, Dickey is convinced prison isn't the answer.

Reforms including community-based alternatives to prison and early release
programs, would reduce inmate populations, taking the pressure off the
state to open new prisons, allowing the return of more than 3,000 inmates
held in other states and a reallocation of resources to better focus
corrections spending on treatment and reintegration of offenders into the
community.

"The moment of risk is when that prisoner returns to us," Dickey said. "By
spending so much of our money on prisons, we don't have resources deployed
for the amount of supervision and support that he needs when he returns to
us. The result is we don't have much public safety, and we may have put
ourselves at greater risk when he comes back to the community."

During the election campaign, Gov. Jim Doyle's Democratic opponents, Tom
Barrett and Kathleen Falk, argued that the state needed to consider early
release for non-violent offenders nearing the end of their sentences as a
budget-balancing measure.

Doyle insisted that the answer to rising prison populations and
incarceration costs is not in "opening up the back door of prisons and
letting dangerous prisoners out," but by keeping youths out of the justice
system in the first place.

That's still Doyle's position, Corrections Secretary Matthew Frank said.

"We need to get to kids early and get them turned around and headed in the
right direction," Frank said.

Other changes that could lower prison populations while still meeting
public safety needs will be more difficult, especially given the lack of
available money for beefed up addiction treatment and community corrections
staff, Frank said.

"We do have a very high prison population in Wisconsin. And in the short
term, I think there are no easy fixes for that," Frank said. "In the long
term, I do think it makes sense to give some thought to what are the most
effective ways to deal with certain types of crime - drug offenses and
certain property offenses."

But with a mounting budget crisis and clogged prisons, others argue, now
precisely is the time to seriously consider early conditional release for
some inmates.

It wouldn't be a first, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh criminal justice
professor Susan Reed points out: Tommy Thompson approved several emergency
releases during his governorship. The decision of who to release was left
to administrators who, because they had a personal stake in ensuring that
their choices wouldn't come back to bite them, had a vested interest in the
inmates' success. "The recidivism rate was zip," Reed said.

"As long as the people making the decisions are the same people who are
going to get beat up big time for what goes on, we have an incentive for
corrections to correct," she said.

The question, of course, is which offenders would qualify. Last week, the
Department of Corrections reported it was holding 21,554 people in prison,
including 3,614 in other states.

What the statistics don't provide is information about who is in the prison
system. Compounding the problem of painting a portrait of who is in the
system and what they are in for is the state's decision last year to
discontinue a publicly released inmate database as a budget-cutting measure.

But the November 2001 version of the database - the last update - sheds
some light on the crimes for which inmates are being held, their sentences
and their backgrounds.

A Northwestern analysis of the database found 32 percent of people behind
bars are in for violent crimes including murder, sexual assault, battery
and robbery.

Another 14 percent are in prison for a variety of crimes against children,
domestic abuse and other in-family crimes.

Four percent are in prison for drunk driving or other felony driving offenses.

And 28 percent are in prison for other non-violent felonies, including 14
percent serving time for drug offenses and 12 percent for theft, fraud and
forgery.

It's those people that most interest advocates of sentencing reform and a
greater embrace of community-based corrections.

There's no doubt that there are less expensive alternatives to prison time.

In 2000 and 2001, the last period for which the Department of Corrections
has issued a biennial report, the cost of incarcerating an adult prisoner
in a state institution was, on average, $26,754 per year. Costs vary on a
monthly basis depending upon security classification. Housing
maximum-security prisoners costs $2,587 per month, compared to $1,980 per
month for medium security prisoners and $2,229 for minimum-security prisoners.

By comparison, putting an inmate on the intensive sanctions program costs
just $1,180.

Reed argues that for many non-violent criminals, the goals of
incapacitation and rehabilitation can be better met in a community setting
- - provided the state commits to increasing probation and parole staff and
the availability of effective treatment programs.

The downside of a growing prison population, especially a growing
population of non-violent offenders, goes well beyond economics, Reed said.

The result, she said, is more people behind bars, overcrowded prisons and
diversion of resources that could be used for addiction treatment and
counseling that could decrease the likelihood of recidivism.

"It's the most expensive way to fail," Reed said. "If we did it better,
we'd save money. And even if we didn't do it better but we did it in the
community, we could still save money without increasing the danger."

Rep. Gregg Underheim, R-Oshkosh, warns against using a broad brush to say
that state prison inmates doing time for non-violent property and drug
crimes all are candidates for early release to community programs or
sentences that don't include prison.

A sentence on a drug or property crime, he said, says nothing about whether
more serious charges were dropped as part of a plea agreement.

Consideration of alternative sentences "is a fair question to ask, but I'm
concerned that there are people who decided to plead guilty to felony drug
crimes because that is a non-violent offense," Underheim said. "There has
to be some mechanism to determine that in fact this is a non-violent offense."

Proponents of sentencing reform acknowledge that their arguments for
establishing shorter sentences and placing more offenders in
community-based programs face an uphill battle.

Shawn Boyne, a policy associate for the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, said
allaying public fears that it would lead to a crime wave likely would
require a pilot program, perhaps in Milwaukee County.

Milwaukee courts sentenced half of the prison population serving time for
non-violent drug offenses, and 40 percent of all offenders serving prison
sentences.

"I think, globally, it's an uphill battle. But given the fiscal crisis in
the state right now, this might be the right time to get some data and
start to educate people," Boyne said.