The budget case for criminal justice reform.

• Author: Eichenthal, David R.
• Position: Solutions

In response to prison overcrowding, California has turned to county governments to assume the burden of housing tens of thousands of offenders who would otherwise be in state prison. If other states that are in fiscal distress and have overcrowded prisons follow California's lead and turn to local governments to pay for and manage the continued reliance on incarceration as a crime reduction strategy, county and other local governments would face real operational and fiscal challenges. This situation could also provide the impetus for decreasing national incarceration rates, if it leads local governments to implement fundamental reforms in criminal justice systems. Budget officials need to be an important part of that discussion, given the potential cost to local government.

GROWTH IN THE U.S. JAIL POPULATION

The number of adult inmates in local jails at year end quadrupled to a high of 777,852 in 2008 from 182,288 in 1980. This trend has begun to reverse --nationally, year-end adult population in jails dropped by 2.2 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively, in 2009 and 2010.

To the extent that the jail population is driven by crime and activity in the criminal justice system, it would appear that population reductions should have begun some time ago. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the crack epidemic drove U.S. crime rates to new highs, and government at the federal, state, and local levels responded with new investments in law enforcement capacity. Between 1980 and 1990, arrests increased nationally by 35.9 percent, and the adult jail population increased by 121 percent. (1)

For the last 20 years, though, both violent and property crime have been declining in the United States, 30.7 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively, between 1995 and 2010. (2) Arrest activity is also down, by 13.2 percent to an estimated 13.1 million in 2010, from 15.1 million in 1995.

During the same period, the average daily jail population rose to 748,552 from 509,828. In 2010, 61.1 percent of inmates in a local jail at mid-year had not been convicted of a crime, up from 56 percent in 1995. (3) The overall jail population increased by half over the last 15 years and the number of sentenced inmates increased by approximately one-third, but the number of individuals in jail pre-trial increased by nearly two-thirds.

THE GROWING COSTS

Jails cost money to build and operate. Between 1995 and 2010, the operating capacity of jails in the United States increased to 866,782 from 545,763, or by 321,019 new jail beds at the local level. Assuming a cost of $75,000 per bed to build, this increase in capacity would have cost local governments more than $24 billion over the last 15 years. (4)

Annual local government spending on jails has increased at a faster rate than overall spending or state spending on corrections. Between 1995 and 2009, total local spending on corrections operations nationally increased to $24.9 billion from $10.7 billion. (5) (These data may understate the increase in spending, as costs might be higher when fully accounting for debt service, pension, and retiree health benefits.)

THE IMPLICATIONS OF CALIFORNIA'S REALIGNMENT

In May 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal court order requiring the State of California to release 30,000 inmates--approximately 20 percent of its inmate population--from the state prison system over the next two...