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February 7, 2008

Economic woes in Michigan impacting corrections and sentencing

News from Michigan provides the latest setting for trotting out my new mantra, "It's the prison economy, stupid."  Here are specifics from this new AP article:

The budget proposal that state budget director Robert Emerson delivers Thursday is expected to trim spending on prisons, but one influential senator has asked Gov. Jennifer Granholm to not count on any savings until legislation changing sentencing requirements actually passes. Granholm said last week in her State of the State address that the state needed to look again at making changes in prison spending in the budget year that starts Oct. 1....

The governor said in December that she's still interested in rewriting sentencing guidelines so some convicts are sent to county jails with shorter sentences rather than to state prisons, or serve a shorter time in prison, saving the state money. She made that proposal last year but it never got taken up by lawmakers....

Sen. Alan Cropsey, a DeWitt Republican who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee and the appropriations subcommittee that oversees corrections spending, warned Wednesday that the Democratic governor may not be able to get the changes she wants to lower prison costs. "Last year, she based her budget on policies to be enacted, on policies she couldn't even get the Democrats to touch," Cropsey said Wednesday. "At this point, either on the Democratic or Republican side, we haven't been shown any changes that anyone feels comfortable with."

Last year, the Granholm administration proposed sentencing changes that would have changed some felonies into misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in jail. Other crimes would have had shorter maximum sentences.  Some drug offenders would face a maximum three-month jail term, not the potential for up to four years in prison.  Under that plan, the $2 billion prison system — which consumes more of the state's tax dollars than its 15 public universities — would have housed 3,300 fewer inmates over three years. Space in crowded county jails would have dropped by 2,000 beds in a year, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections.

But the measures went nowhere. County officials said they feared being saddled with more inmates and incarceration costs, and prosecutors and sheriffs warned the public could be at risk from more criminals on the streets.

The highlight above is my addition to the article because I find it especially important to spotlight that spending on prisons in Michigan exceeds spending on public universities.  Not only is this a telling reality, it also might be a dangerous one: studies show that persons with more educational achievement commit fewer crimes, and thus state investment in university education may well pay better public safety dividends than investments in a prison system.

February 7, 2008 at 07:33 AM | Permalink

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