Gongwer News Update 2-6-07

PROJECTIONS PEG PRISONS TO BE COMPLETELY FULL BY SEPT.

Michigan’s prison population is at the highest it has ever been and at current projections every bed in every prison will be occupied by September, a population projection report from the Department of Corrections said.

Prison population intakes jumped by 8 percent during 2006, a surprisingly large increase over what officials had anticipated and fueled in part by the public reaction to the murders committed by Patrick Selepak, who was mistakenly released instead of held for parole violations.

The report was issued late last week from Corrections Director Patricia Caruso to Senate Appropriations Judiciary and Corrections Subcommittee Chair Sen. Alan Cropsey (R-DeWitt) and House Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Rep. Alma Smith (D-Ypsilanti). The department was required to make the report to the Legislature.

The report also was issued separately from reports that Governor Jennifer Granholm will attempt to take some pressure off prison population by speeding up commutations for elderly and sick prisoners who are no longer considered dangerous (see related story).

At the end of 2006, the report said, there were 51,454 prisoners incarcerated in Michigan, a new high. The total was 1,700 more than the previous record set in October 2002.

In early 2006, the total prison population was 262 fewer than the October 2002 record and in early February 2006, officials had projected a population totaling 1,540 inmates fewer than the number that actually were held at the end of 2006. For four years, officials had relatively successfully enacted a prison growth control plan to keep some lid on the number of new incarcerations, the report said.

The primary factor that changed the estimate was the Selepak situation. Those crimes “caused the entire Michigan criminal justice system to react with an escalating pattern of more arrests, more sentences to prison, fewer paroles and more revocations of parole. The patterns for growth and prison population size that followed the widespread media attention not only eliminated the gains of the successful prison control strategies but also now appear to represent a ‘new normal’ for the pressures that drive prison population.

“Every criminal justice decision maker from police on the streets through district and circuit court judges, jailers, parole agents and the parole board was affected and there is little evidence that these pressures will ease in the short term absent new approaches to controlling growth,” the report said.

But by September, the total prison population is expected to total 52,480, which means all planned beds in prisons and prison camps will be occupied.

And the report projects out to December 2011, by which time it said the state’s prison population could total 57,259.

Ms. Caruso outlined the sudden increase in the prison population as a reason why the department overspent its budget in the 2005-06 fiscal year.

The report also calls for the state to consider revitalizing the Community Residential Program as a way of controlling prison population. In the early 1990s, there were as many as 3,500 “low-risk” individuals in the program preparing for jobs and go back into the community when their sentences ended. The report said fewer than 2 percent of the individuals in the program committed new felonies. But when requirements came into place that all prisoners serve their minimum sentences, the populations collapsed. Now there are just 61 prisoners in the program, the report said.

Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith (D-Ypsilanti), chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections, said alternatives to prison have not been fully examined or funded by the state: mental health hospitals or programs have been cut or closed down and the jail population now encompasses people who shouldn’t be there.

Community-based programs have been an effective alternative to prison, she said, and funding should be beefed up for that along with funding for mental health services.

The money spent for those services would also not be as much as $30,000 – the average amount spent yearly on one inmate in Michigan, Ms. Wheeler Smith said.