ARIZ. AIMS TO CUT PRISON COSTS; IN TEXAS, A NEW APPROACH

While the U.S. prison population is declining for the first time in
nearly 40 years, Arizona is headed in the opposite direction.

Unlike in some other states, mandatory-sentencing laws keep Arizona
inmates in prison for nearly all of their sentenced time. And state
lawmakers say rewriting sentencing guidelines to grant shorter prison
terms is politically unlikely.

Amid a historic budget shortfall, some lawmakers are intent on
finding ways to reduce the $880 million bill taxpayers foot each year
for locking up convicts, nearly 10 percent of the state's $8.9
billion budget. A look at other states with similar challenges shows
some ways prison populations - and costs - can be cut.

With changes made over the past five years, Texas has reduced its
prison population and halted plans for a huge prison expansion. New
approaches to incarceration have saved money without taking the teeth
out of the criminal-justice system, says a Republican Texas lawmaker
who had a hand in the changes.

Texas has addressed several key areas.

. In prison: Many prison sentences and repeat offenses result from
drug crimes. Texas offered substance-abuse treatment in jail and put
some prisoners in treatment after being released.

. During parole and probation: Many inmates who commit minor
infractions while on parole end up back in prison. Texas created
detention centers to provide supervised housing to punish those
offenders without sending them to prison.

. After prison: Many former inmates fail to reacclimate to life
outside and end up committing more crimes. The state built
residential treatment centers and halfway houses to help former
prisoners with the transition.

Such measures don't necessarily mean abandoning a "tough on crime"
approach. Texas has long had a reputation as a law-and-order state.
Like Arizona, it has a long border with Mexico and the associated
problems with drug- and human-smuggling.

But state Rep. Jerry Madden, a Republican who became the chairman of
Texas' Corrections Committee in 2005, said he realized expanding
those prisoner-treatment programs could save taxpayers millions by
avoiding the costs of building more prisons.

"Once I became convinced of that, it became the job of convincing
others," Madden said. "There are two to three things I talked about:
The public's going to be safer - if people don't recidivate (relapse
into criminal behavior), we're probably going to have less crime -
and it's going to cost less money."

Texas spent several hundred million dollars to expand the programs
but did not build any new prison capacity.

By contrast, the Arizona Department of Corrections plans to add
15,000 beds in state and privately owned prisons to its system in the
next four years. The official estimate calls for the prison
population to grow by 114 each month for the next 10 years.

Rep. Cecil Ash, R-Mesa, is chairman of a House committee examining
crime and punishment in Arizona. Ash said he believes there are ways
to reduce spending without weakening the criminal-justice system. "We
have enough prisons here in Arizona," Ash said.

Rising Numbers

The prison population nationwide, for the first time since 1971,
declined from 2008 to 2009. But Arizona joined 22 other states in
adding prisoners last year and ranked among the top 10 states in the
percentage increase in its prison population.

There is hope that prison numbers will decline on their own over the
long term. Inmate populations in the state's largest county jails
have dropped during the past two years, matching a decline in crime
rates. Jails house low-level offenders and the many people who have
been arrested but are awaiting trial. In time, the downward trend
could spill over to prisons as fewer people are sentenced for felonies.

But prison officials say it will take years for those declines to be
reflected in prison populations. For now, the number of people
serving felony sentences continues to outpace population growth in
part because some crimes that formerly were misdemeanors, such as
driving under the influence and certain domestic-violence incidents,
have been turned into felonies, said Mike Dolny of the Arizona
Department of Corrections.

An increase of nearly 30 percent in the state's population from 2000
to 2009 also could account for much of the prison-population spike,
said Phil Schroeder, who generates DOC population projections. But
prison rolls grew by nearly 50 percent during the same time.

Texas' resident population grew about 20 percent in that same span,
while the head count in prisons increased by less than 4 percent.

Madden, the legislator charged with overhauling the Texas prison
system, said the price of incarceration forced lawmakers' hands.

Texas' Savings

Legislators there began exploring ways to house fewer criminals in
state custody and put more in community-based treatment centers where
they would be provided with more of the tools to successfully re-enter society.

There were no changes to sentencing guidelines because, Madden said,
changing punishment for crimes would do nothing to help the immediate
population problem.

"Sentencing guidelines won't help you next year," Madden said.
"Without retroactivity on it, you're just looking in a forward
manner. That bought me nothing in the short term."

Instead, the efforts in Texas focused on providing more programs for
convicts while they are still in custody to help them stay off drugs
and train them for jobs when they are released.

The state spent more than $26 million to offer more substance-abuse
treatment in jails for low-level drug users and property criminals.
It also began to offer intensive substance-abuse treatment to
prisoners, which includes a requirement to spend time in a treatment
center after release.

The state also spent more than $110 million to build residential
treatment centers and halfway houses to help former prisoners.

For those who did violate their release conditions by using alcohol
or drugs or failing to pay fines, the state set up a system of
progressive sanctions that provided quick, short-term responses,
Madden said, such as putting offenders in county jail for the weekend
instead of shipping them back to prison. The state also spent $30
million to create more short-term detention centers.

The changes cost the state $241 million but saved much more.

"The alternative we had out there was we were going to spend about
$550 million to build new prisons," Madden said.

Texas spent about $3 billion in 2009 on its criminal-justice system,
which included about $42 per day to house the 172,000 prisoners in
state custody.

Arizona taxpayers spent $886 million last year on the state prison
system, including an average of about $56 a day for the 40,000
convicts in state prisons.

Arizona legislators have appropriated more than $200 million to the
prison system since 2008 to keep pace with convicts coming into the system.

Lessons to Glean

What worked in Texas will not necessarily succeed in Arizona,
particularly when it comes to expanding programs for ex-convicts
after they are released.

Arizona's system is largely a function of its truth-in-sentencing
laws, which require state prisoners to serve at least 85 percent of
their sentences. That requirement adds up to more time behind bars
but less time after release when the prisoner is supervised and
mandated to participate in such programs. In most cases, the
opportunity for the state to monitor a prisoner ends with the prison
sentence because there is so little time left for parole.

It also means prison officials cannot offer inmates much in the way
of time off for good behavior or other incentives for participating
in treatment and re-education programs during incarceration - the
very programs that could help ensure they don't return to prison later.

But some of Texas' lessons can be applied in Arizona without gutting
the state's sentencing guidelines, particularly if prisons can offer
programs to help rehabilitate inmates and reward their participation
by shaving time off the sentence.

"We need to work more on incentivizing our inmates to get out earlier
and to not recidivate," Ash said. "If they have this incentive to go
through programs, of course, we're going to have to provide the
programs to them. Right now, the inmates have very little motivation
to take those."

Ash is not alone in his efforts to address prison-population growth.

A bill passed by the Arizona Legislature in 2008 offered incentives
to probation departments that can reduce the number of probationers
sent back to prison. In the first year, probation revocations were
down more than 12 percent, keeping 987 people out of prison.

Ash said the committee has discussed ideas that include reinstating
the earned-release credit program that would provide incentives for
inmates to participate in education and rehabilitation programs while
in prison.

The program was eliminated in the mid-1990s, and Ash said the Arizona
Legislature could reinstate it without changing sentencing statutes
or bringing extra pressure to county prosecutors who want to maintain
a "tough on crime" reputation.

"If they have a statute that says you can earn one day release for
every two days served, that's off the prosecutor," Ash said. "It's
really up to the inmate. That wouldn't require any significant
changes of sentences that are imposed by statutes themselves."

Prosecutors have reservations about anything that would be perceived
as going easy on criminals.

But in Texas, once the "pieces of the puzzle" came together to show
the benefits that changes could have on prison populations and the
state's bottom line, Madden said selling the plan became easier.

Texas shed more than 1,200 prisoners last year and saved more than
$200 million in anticipated costs to build and house criminals.

"When I became chairman of Corrections in 2005 and you told me we
would have done all those things, I would have said something is
wrong with you," Madden said. "But we had the facts that said if we
do these things, there's a high probability we will make the
communities safer and spend less money, and third, we would in fact
change some people's lives."