Testimony
House Appropriations Subcommittee on
Corrections
March 3, 2009
Barbara Levine,
Executive Director
Citizens Alliance on
Prisons and Public Spending
Good
morning, Chairwoman Smith and
Members of the Committee. I’m
Barbara Levine and I’m the executive
director of CAPPS, the Citizens
Alliance on Prisons and Public
Spending.
CAPPS
is a nonprofit public policy
organization that advocates for
reducing excessive state spending on
incarceration and shifting resources
to services that prevent crime and
rehabilitate offenders. Our core
message for the last eight years has
been that prison growth is driven by
policy choices, not crime rates.
This point was strongly reinforced
last June by the Citizens Research
Council’s report on growth in the
Michigan corrections system and as
recently as this morning by a new
report from the Pew Center on the
States.
We
need to examine those policy choices
in order to understand how we got to
where we are and to identify which
policy changes would be most
effective in safely reducing the
prison population and overall
corrections costs. As you undertake
this examination, I urge you to
adopt three governing principles.
-
Decide what size you want the
prison population to be in four
years, identify the steps
necessary to achieve that goal
and begin implementing them now.
-
Do
not take any options off the
table unless they pose a
demonstrable risk to public
safety.
-
Do
not treat the seriousness of the
original offense and the
prisoner’s current risk of
reoffending as if they were the
same thing. In fact, they are
very different.
I would like to use my few minutes
this morning to briefly address each
of these principles.
First, deciding how large a system
is actually needed and working
toward that goal. I am not
suggesting that we should
predetermine some optimal size for
the prisoner population, based
solely on budget, regardless of the
impact on public safety. I am
suggesting that our system has
become very bloated over the last
two decades because we incarcerate
far more people for far longer than
we need to for public safety. I am
suggesting that we can look to our
own history, to the examples of
similar states and to a great deal
of available research to set
reasonable parameters. And I am
also suggesting that it is important
to have a long-term strategy with
measurable goals, even though those
goals may have to be adjusted if
unforeseen events occur. Otherwise
we risk engaging in ad hoc fixes
each year that don’t consistently
carry us toward an agreed-upon
outcome.
The importance of having a
multi-year strategic plan that
drives the prison population down
substantially is evident from the
Governor’s budget. The short-term
goal of reducing the population by
3,000 to 45,533 is a significant
start. It achieves in 2010 what the
Council of State Governments
recommendations would not achieve
until 2012. Yet, for various
reasons, this substantial change
will only reduce GF spending by
$49.7 million. Corrections’ portion
of the overall GF budget will
actually increase to more than 21%
while university spending will stay
at 17%. DOC spending will be 127%
of what it was in 2000; university
spending will be 92%. Other
programs, like community mental
health, day care, before and after
school programs, services to the
aging and SSI payments will be cut
severely. If we are to have any
hope of restructuring our priorities
for the sake of our future, we have
to be much bolder and more
systematic about reassessing our
prison policies
In 1985, our prisoner population was
below 18,000 and our incarceration
rate was 194 per 100,000. We won’t
get back to that level any time
soon. But it is not unrealistic to
aim for returning to the 1991 level
of 36,000 within the next four
years. That would be a reduction of
3,000 prisoners each year. It would
give us an incarceration rate of
360, which is much more like those
of the other Great Lakes states.
So what policies should we change?
This brings us to the second
principle: Don’t take anything off
the table unless it would jeopardize
public safety. For the last nine
years, CAPPS has focused heavily on
parole. Changes in parole policies
since the board was reconstituted in
1992 have been the single biggest
contributor to prison growth. This
is evident from the table attached
to my testimony. As we see the
proportion of prisoners who are
eligible for parole increase
dramatically, we see the total
population increase as well.
Beginning to reverse these policies
is a major step forward. But it
cannot be the only step. As the
Department’s own population
projection memo notes, there is a
finite limit to this strategy
because, at any given time, at least
70% of prisoners are not eligible
for parole.
I have given you CAPPS’ Ten-Point
Plan to Reduce Corrections Spending
in 2010. Our proposal endorses
parole reforms and re-entry programs
that have begun to take hold. But
it also addresses restoring both the
sentencing commission and earned
credits for in-prison conduct and
program participation, strategies
that could make people become
parole-eligible sooner, and
pre-parole transition programs that
would extend the reach of MPRI to
people who are close to their
earliest release dates. The latter
proposals are more controversial
because they are opposed by some
stakeholders. They are not among
the options recommended by the
Council of State Governments. But
they are widely accepted corrections
strategies for controlling prison
growth, conserving tax dollars and
ensuring the most appropriate
treatment of individuals.
We talk a lot about evidence-based
practices and doing what works. I
urge you to follow that philosophy
wherever it leads. Consider every
proposal on its merits. Get the
data necessary to do your own
independent evaluation. We can no
longer afford to reject anything out
of hand. Opposition to restoring
practices that used to be common in
Michigan cannot be justified solely
by the rhetoric of fear. Unless
there is credible evidence that
these practices negatively affect
public safety, we have no reason not
to consider them.
Finally, it is critical that we not
treat the seriousness of the offense
and the person’s risk of
re-offending as if they were the
same thing. We routinely make
proposals for reforms, then carve
out big exceptions by saying that
the proposals will not apply to
people who have committed violent or
sexual crimes. This is
understandable. No one wants to be
responsible for releasing someone
who then commits a terrible crime.
Yet as a policy position, this is
very costly and unnecessary.
Recidivism rates vary greatly
depending on the nature of the
offense, but not necessarily in the
manner you might suppose. A large
body of research proves that
recidivism rates are very high for
economically motivated crimes like
larceny, burglary and robbery. That
is why work-related re-entry
programs and removing barriers to
employing people with criminal
records are such important
strategies for reducing
recidivism.
The very crimes for which we tend to
deny parole the most are the ones
that present the lowest risk of
reoffending. People convicted of
homicide almost never kill again.
Return rates are also extremely low
for sex offenders. CAPPS is in the
process of completing research on
the recidivism rates of people
released from prison in Michigan
over a 14-year period. Of nearly
6,200 sex offenders, only 3.1% were
returned for committing new sex
offenses. Only 7.5% were returned
to prison for committing a new crime
of any kind. The other table
attached to my testimony shows that
the Michigan results are very
similar to studies done by the
Bureau of Justice Statistics and by
researchers in other states.
Despite the low odds that any
particular person will re-offend, it
is true that eventually some parolee
will do something terrible. Because
we cannot predict who that person
will be, we minimize the risk by
keeping thousands of people with
good institutional records for years
past their earliest release dates.
This is costly, wasteful and
unfair. The Council of State
Governments perpetuates this
approach. CSG recommends a
presumption of release after serving
the minimum sentence but would not
apply it to people convicted of
offenses that carry statutory
maximum sentences of life or any
term, regardless of the actual
sentence imposed. By excluding
exactly those people who have served
their minimums but are repeatedly
denied release because of their
crimes, not their risk, the CSG
proposal misses an opportunity to
create significant change. I have
also given you CAPPS’s analysis of
all the CSG proposals.
The bottom line is that our prisons
are not filled with people convicted
of possessing a little marijuana.
We don’t have the option of
releasing thousands of minor
offenders and declaring victory. We
must be realistic about who is
filling our prisons and why, if we
are to have any hope of bringing the
population down to manageable size.
I have talked a lot about numbers
and policy choices. But in the end,
this is about people. So the last
piece I have given you is a handful
of prisoner profiles. They include
a
German national convicted of raping
his wife who has been denied parole
seven times, two men convicted
of second-degree murder who have,
respectively,
served five and
22 years more than their
sentencing judges intended, and
two non-violent parolees who were
each returned to prison for five
years for possessing a pellet or BB
gun. You can judge for
yourselves how much public safety
has been gained from keeping these
men locked up and whether taxpayers’
money might be better spent.
Thank you for your attention.
