We are pleased to announce the launch of this new website, many months in the making. NCCD is looking forward to a new spirit of interaction with the larger community through the wonders of modern technology. Making all of NCCD’s history and experience even more accessible, we combine the old with the new and look forward to a new decade.
This new site will inform and be informed in a new, dynamic way that we hope will prove to be a powerful tool in the public discussion on justice issues. We invite you to sign up for our blog, spread the word about the wealth of publications we have, and inform yourselves and your associates with the analyses NCCD has always put forth, based on evidence, data, experience, and insight.
In that very spirit, we release our newest publication on the cost savings to be realized from alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenses entitled, The Extravagance of Imprisonment Revisited. Recognizing that many of the reforms NCCD stands for have been part of the conversation for decades, we refer back to a seminal essay by former NCCD President, Milton Rector. In 1973, Rector wrote of the fiscal and social costs of the too-liberal use of incarceration, a question still very much in contention.
In this latest analysis, we found that, as a nation, we can save an estimated $9.7 billion dollars as an initial installment on ongoing and significant annual savings by changing how we handle a portion of the lowest-level offenders in our systems. As of 2008, there were 413,693 men and women incarcerated for nonviolent, nonsexual crimes that don’t involve significant property loss. The vast majority of these could be eligible for effective and cost-saving sanctions such as drug courts, electronic monitoring, or work release programs.
With funding from Guardsmark, LLC, NCCD researchers took a conservative estimate of the number of low-level offenders currently locked up and the price tag for their incarceration, then compared those costs to an estimate of alternative treatments based on some that are already in use in many states. The numbers relate to the US as a whole and four of the most populous states in the union—California, New York, Texas, and Florida.
During a fiscal crisis, budget considerations often trump political ideology, which may seem like a bit of a devil’s bargain. However, many alternatives to incarceration have proven to be effective and safe as well as economical. If they were expanded to cover the hundreds of thousands of prisoners who qualify, the larger value of alternatives could speak for itself. Read it here The Extravagance of Imprisonment Revisited.
2 Comments
FYI, there were some errors in the portion of the report about Texas. See this writeup where I did my best to correct the numbers:
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/01/wrong-but-right-good-idea-bad-data.html
This is in response to a blog post written by Grits for Breakfast on January 21, 2010.
There are many factors to consider in a cost analysis. We believe that we have put forth the most accurate report possible within the limits of the available data, and we appreciate the chance to respond to any comments.
The 2009 budget for TDCJ was $2.9 billion. However, this is an annual operating budget and not directly relevant to our calculation. Our calculation of $2.8 billion is not based on a single year but rather, on the cost of incarcerating an individual for an entire sentence. In Texas, the average nonserious offender is behind bars for approximately four years.
Specifically, our figure was derived by multiplying the number of nonserious offenders by the annual cost per capita times the average number of years served. According to the National Corrections Reporting Program, the average prison time served in Texas for nonserious drug offenders is 48.6 months and for other nonserious offenders is 38.4 months. Thus the weighted average cost of incarcerating nonserious offenders is 3.9 years per inmate. This times $17,400 per year is $69,405 per inmate. This is the key difference in the Grits for Breakfast blog and our report. We then multiply that total cost per inmate by 80% of nonserious offenders (or 40,821) and arrive at $2.8 billion.
Annual savings could be derived similarly by using new admissions to prison instead of the sitting population. We estimate that an annual cost savings would be roughly 1/3 of the one-time savings. This is another valid way to look at the issue. There is ample detail on our methods on pages 4 and 5 of the report, and in each state section.
The costs for alternatives come from reports by the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council and the Texas Legislative Budget Board. They represent costs of the programs that are run in Texas, adjusted for 2009.
We are glad that we agree on the importance of helping policymakers and the public understand that large numbers of inmates can be effectively sentenced to alternatives, saving tax-payer money and still protecting public safety.