Published: March 12, 2008 12:28 am            

Budget contains 'first step' in addressing prison population

Frankfort — The budget passed Tuesday by the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee contains provisions to increase parole review, in home incarceration and other measures to reduce prison and jail populations.

Budget contains 'first step' in addressing prison population

County jails won’t get more money under the budget passed out of the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee Tuesday, but they won’t lose any either.

But there are some things in the budget which may reduce the explosion of inmates and overcrowding in Kentucky prisons and jails and even save money for the state corrections department.

A&R Vice Chair Robin Webb, D-Grayson, said the budget calls for an increase in the number of parole board teams to “allow more direct review” of inmates readiness for parole and “require more attention to Class D felons in county jails who are not getting paroled at the same rate as prison inmates.”

She said that doesn’t make sense inasmuch as Class D inmates have committed non-violent crimes and represent less risk to society. The budget also contains provisions to increase in-home incarceration, allow more credit for good behavior and credit for completion of education and substance abuse programs.

Together, those provisions should add up to fewer inmates in jails and prison while awaiting trial or by serving alternative sentences or by being released sooner. Rep. Jesse Crenshaw, D-Lexington, who chairs the subcommittee on justice, said the changes might add up to as much as a $30 million savings for the state corrections system.

“It’s a good start on some long-term policy issues we need to do,” Webb said.

The budget also restores $1.9 million in county jail allotments which Beshear cut out of his original jail proposal. That money was first appropriated in 1983 to help jails with the costs of housing county inmates and is separate from the per diem payments the state makes to county jails to house state Class D and sometimes Class C prisoners.

The amount has risen only about $400,000 since 1983 while county prisoner incarceration rates have risen about 500 percent, according to Vince Lang, Executive Director of the County Judge/Executives Association. The association has been lobbying lawmakers to increase the allotment, but ran into a constrained revenue forecast and budget outlook this year.

While the A&R Committee marked up the budget, Beshear announced he supports Senate Bill 72 sponsored by Sen. Dan Kelly, R-Springfield, which would allow non-violent, non-sexual offenders with substance abuse problems to be diverted into pre-trial treatment programs.

“It’s the governor’s position that we’ve got to do something about the corrections population,” said Kelly who welcomed the governor’s support for the bill which has already passed the Senate and is now in the House Judiciary Committee which will hold hearings on the bill Wednesday.

The bill would allow those charged with non-violent, non-sexual crimes to enter intensive, residential drug treatment programs. Research data shows those who complete such programs have a much lower incidence of recurrence of drug problems and re-entering the justice system. Those who successfully complete the program under Kelly’s bill would avoid jail time.

Since 1970, the overall crime rate has increased by about 3 percent but the incarceration rate has jumped 600 percent as the total prison population in Kentucky went from about 2,800 in 1970 to 22,400 today. About 8,000 of those are housed in county jails which in many counties are busting county budgets.

Two weeks ago, the Pew Center for the States released a report that said Kentucky’s prison population increased 12 percent last year, the fastest rate of growth in the country. The U.S. now imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Media reports, including a 10-story series on the crisis in county jails by CNHI News Service, and the continuing outcry of University of Kentucky Law Professor Robert Lawson, who wrote much of Kentucky’s penal code, has increased pressure on lawmakers to address the problem.

The Senate passed a resolution to create a subcommittee of the Joint Interim Committee on the Judiciary to review the state’s penal code to see if enhancements of penalties and crimes over the past three decades has led to the prison explosion. Beshear has called for a task force with a similar mission and his Justice Cabinet Secretary Michael Brown said Monday that work will be performed by the Criminal Justice Council.

But Webb said Monday the provisions in the budget can provide some immediate relief and help produce longer term solutions to some of the contributing factors to the rising prison and jail populations.



RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com.



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