Prisons full by fall; now what?
Governor's nonviolent offender release plan would save $92M, but critics worry about safety.
Charlie Cain and Norman Sinclair / Detroit News Lansing Bureau
LANSING -- Michigan's prisons are bursting at the seams, sucking up precious state dollars at an alarming rate and could close to new inmates by fall.
"Unless we immediately take action, we're likely to run out of beds by September. We are just out of beds," Dennis Schrantz, deputy director of the Michigan Department of Corrections, told The Detroit News on Friday.
With an inmate population at an all-time high of just more than 51,500 -- an increase of 173 percent from 20 years ago -- Michigan operates the nation's fifth-largest prison system. It costs taxpayers $5 million a day to run the state's 42 prisons and eight minimum security camps. The state is paying more for corrections ($1.94 billion) than it does for its 15 public universities ($1.78 billion).
Michigan's incarceration rate of 489 inmates for each 100,000 people is 28 percent higher than the rates in the neighboring Great Lakes states. Michigan's crime rate is comparable to that in those states, officials said.
It's against that stark backdrop that Gov. Jennifer Granholm is proposing significant changes in the state's prison system, hoping to open the cell door to about 5,500 nonviolent, low-risk inmates beginning Oct. 1.
The move, which Schrantz said does not require legislative approval, would mean a savings of $92 million.
Prison reform advocates and tough-on-crime legislators and lawmen agree that the system needs fixing but are mixed on the governor's proposal.
Barbara Levine of the Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending (CAPPS), a prisoner policy group, said the governor's proposal is welcome news.
"We agree these people should be released; it's a good first step, but it tends to show there are a lot of people who could have been released all along," she said.
Alan Cropsey, R-Dewitt, vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, doesn't embrace the idea, saying public safety, especially in Detroit, has benefited from keeping prisoners locked up.
"We will have to take a close look at it because the No. 1 concern is public safety," Cropsey said. "(Detroit is) not known as Murder City anymore, and there is something to be said for that."
Matt Allen, spokesman for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, said while the mayor and Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings are acutely aware of the state's financial crisis, they are also concerned that many released inmates will come back to Wayne County and Detroit.
"Is the state going to actively monitor these returnees? The state, not the police chief, has the responsibility to closely supervise these people, and if they commit new crimes will they be charged with the new crimes and sent back to prison?" Allen asked.
For Marvin Dixon of Detroit, the plan isn't worth the risk.
"It is a bad idea. They are bad people and that's why they are in jail," said Dixon, 38, a prep cook at a downtown Detroit restaurant.
Dixon believes the cost of keeping the inmates could be covered by some belt-tightening in Lansing and a slight increase in taxes.
Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel is sympathetic to the tough choices the governor and legislators must make.
"When it comes to public safety, we don't like to see releases," he said. "Because these are low-risk inmates, it doesn't mean they may not commit more serious crimes in the future."
Granholm's proposed corrections budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 still calls for a 4 percent spending increase from this year. That's largely because of the rising costs of health care, pensions, labor and utilities.
Prison officials point to the $30 million health care tab the state is paying for the treatment of the 300 most expensive inmate cases.
Under the governor's plan:
Levine said the 3,400 low-risk inmates proposed for parole could have been out of prison long ago if the parole board followed its own release guidelines.
"The proportion of people who are low risk for committing new crimes who score high on parole guidelines and paroled has been steadily declining year by year," she said. "In 1996, some 81 percent of those (scoring) high probability with low risk to commit another crime were paroled. Last year, the number for that group fell to 53 percent."
Unlike a sentence that can be appealed when a judge departs from guidelines, the parole board's decision cannot be appealed.
Levine said the parole board's "life means life" interpretation of state law covering parolable life sentences has resulted in 800 inmates serving double and triple the sentences judges intended.
A 2002 Michigan State Bar Association survey of 95 current and retired judges revealed judges expected prisoners sentenced to life with the possibility of parole to serve about 12 years before being eligible for parole and to be released in 16 years.
Some were stunned that elderly inmates they thought were paroled decades ago were still in prison.
In 2003, the state enacted a five-year plan to control prison growth. It produced results in 2003 and 2004 when the number of inmates declined. The population increased slightly in 2005.
But a year ago, Patrick Selepak quickly changed all that.
Selepak, a 27-year-old drifter with a string of felony convictions, was mistakenly released on Jan. 10 after he had been returned to prison for violating his parole. On Feb. 15, he and his 19-year-old fiancee, Samantha Bachynski, brutally tortured and killed Scott Berels and his pregnant wife, Melissa, in New Baltimore. A week later the pair killed another man.
The grisly crimes and media attention they generated caused judges, prosecutors and jailers to take a hard-line approach in dealing with criminals.
In January 2006, the number of prison inmates was 77 fewer than the month before. But the inmate population grew by 185 in February, 559 in March and 323 in April.
The state's prison population grew 4.2 percent last year when 11,091 inmates were incarcerated. There are 1,540 more inmates today than projected. The state had not expected to have this many prisoners until September 2008.
"We're like a hotel that's never full," said Schrantz of the Corrections Department. "We don't have discretion to pick who we want to let in."
You can reach Charlie Cain at (517) 371-2470 or ccain@detnews.com.
© Copyright 2007 The Detroit News. All rights reserved.
Sen. Alan Cropsey
Sheriff Mark Hackel
