Costs cause states to pursue prison alternatives

This new article from Stateline.org, entitled " States seek alternatives to more prisons," highlights how prison overcrowding problems across the country are creating the necessity to invent new types of responses to crime.  Here are excerpts from the article (which includes a cool graphic reflecting this detailed analysis of state-by-state increases in corrections costs):

With swelling prison populations cutting into state budgets, lawmakers are exploring ways to ease overcrowding beyond building expensive new correctional facilities. Though the construction of prisons continues as states struggle to provide enough beds for those behind bars, legislators increasingly are looking at other ways to free up space and save money, including expanded programs to help prevent offenders from being incarcerated again, earlier release dates for low-risk inmates and sentencing revisions.

Criminal justice analysts point to Kansas and Texas as recent innovators. Both states are putting off building new prisons, focusing instead on rehabilitation and recidivism. At the same time, a new $7.7 billion prison spending plan in California — where overcrowding last year forced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) to declare a state of emergency — has met with skepticism.  Critics call the plan "prison expansion, not prison reform" and say the initiative relies on impractical fixes such as shipping inmates out of state.

State spending on prisons surged 10 percent nationally last fiscal year (see graphic) and growing inmate populations played a lead role in those costs, according to an analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Corrections trails only education and health care in swallowing state dollars, and experts say lawmakers are responding to the budgetary pressures by trying more cost-effective approaches.

Some related posts:

• Potent prison projections from Pew
• Important new Vera report on "Reconsidering Incarceration"
• Resisting the call for more prison spending
• "Justice Reinvestment" in Texas