• Subscribe
• Manage my subscription
• Sign up for e-headlines

Melot: Doing nothing can be best plan
This is an election year, which means citizens will be hearing quite a bit about what government can or should be doing. (read more) - Published 01.20.2004

CORRECTION: As of Oct. 10, the Michigan Department of Corrections supervised 56,000 people on probation and about 17,000 on parole. An Oct. 17 editorial used an incorrect probation number from an Associated Press report.

As lawmakers cast about for ways to address the state's $900 million budget deficit, eyes should fall on one of the state's biggest spenders - the Department of Corrections.

With a budget of $1.7 billion, Corrections is one of Michigan's largest financial commitments. All this effort goes into guarding roughly 48,000 prisoners and monitoring 22,000 on probation and parole.

Yet preliminary results from an analysis by the Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending says Michigan's prisons are holding more people than necessary.

The study found that 35 percent of state prisoners are eligible for parole; roughly 17,000 people at the time of the study. And most of these prisoners are in lower security facilities, says CAPPS Executive Director Barbara Levine. Figuring the average cost to hold and provide health care to such prisoners is $24,000, holding this parolable population costs taxpayers up to $400 million a year.

Neither Levine nor anyone else is advocating a mass release. There can be good reasons to hold these felons, such as a continuing pattern of violent behavior. And, frankly, in any group of released prisoners are some who will commit more crimes.

Also, any parolee will require monitoring ... costs that would cut into any savings of a release.

But what Levine's group is arguing is that Michigan's parole board can't simply reject parole for prisoners based upon their original crimes.

Paroles have been rising. And the Granholm administration has backed a program to divert ex-cons who make technical parole violations from re-incarceration into other sanctions.

The fact is, Michigan's prison population is so large - and corrections spending so high - that incremental reforms won't have significant impact.

And maybe that's how plenty of state residents want it. Politicians don't lose elections by calling for longer prison terms.

But such policies are costly ... costs Michigan might not be willing to bear, especially if it means less money for the health and education of the law-abiding among us.