"Prison spending still shackles state budget"

The title of this post is the headline of this effective commentary from a local paper in Colorado.  Here are a few excerpts from a piece that effectively spotlights how significant and consequential prison sepnding has become in that state:

Recent history shows that prison spending in Colorado, and the sentencing polices that drive that spending, has been constraining state spending for decades, and will continue to do so into the near future.

In 1985, the Legislature doubled the maximum penalties in Colorado's presumptive sentencing range for all levels of felony crimes.  The average sentence length quickly increased by two-thirds, and Colorado's inmate population more than doubled in the next five years.  It has more than doubled again since.

In an effort to keep pace with the capacity demands of such unprecedented growth in the prison population, successive legislatures and governors have taken Colorado taxpayers on an extreme prison spending spree that has pushed corrections spending from less than 3 percent to nearly 9 percent of general fund spending.

It is a simple formula, but a dramatic increase in spending for one item as a percentage of the state's general fund (prisons) necessarily means that other spending items (such as health care and higher education) have had to decrease as a percentage of general fund appropriation.

This year's Joint Budget Committee budget briefing notes that in the 16 years since Colorado lawmakers implemented the 6 percent spending limit, prison spending has grown "at a compound annual rate of 9.5 percent."  If prison spending had actually been held to the 6 percent growth, then last year's Department of Corrections operating budget would have been around $430 million; instead it was nearly $677 million.

So the current opportunity cost of Colorado's extreme prison spending spree is a quarter billion dollars that could have been spent on health care and higher education.

This commentary serves to highlight, yet again, why I think anyone concerned about government growth and excessive government spending needs to be focusing on sentencing reform.  Beyond the opportunity costs noted in this commentary, there is the inevitable additional costs from increased prison populations that get passed on to both state and federal taxpayers.

Some recent related posts about the realities of the prison economy:

• The state of cost problems in the states of prison nation
• How many states are being forced by economic realities to consider releasing prisoners?
• Will we invest in classrooms or cells in these tough times?
• "To save money on prisons, states take a softer stance"
• "To Cut Costs, States Relax Prison Policies"
• "Shrinking State Budgets May Spring Some Inmates"
• "Ohio lawmakers mull sweeping reform to cut prison populations"
• Notable report on the impact of the prison economy in the Sunshine State
• Fascinating fights over how to pass the prison buck in California
• "Low-level felons add millions to spending"
• "Tough sentencing harder on budgets than on crime"