Because of our countries economic situation, we now are faced with making some decisions. Some are simple decisions, like limiting our grocery bill or how much we spend on personal entertainment, but others, and most, are much more important decisions.
In my last post I talked about what we had to look forward to in 2010. We are trying to find money to support the plan for a new healthcare system, we are trying to find money to support the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and now it looks we are trying to find millions of dollars to fund those who are not directly involved with society, but play a bigger part than we might like to think.
We are having to think about our prisons.
Many of you will look back earlier on this blog and see that I was involved in a profile project about a program based here in Alabama called the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Program. If you read it, you will see it's clear I have an invested interest in treating prisons the way they were designed. To educate and reintroduce inmates back into society.
In that essay I talked with some people from a victim's rights group whose overall attitude towards our inmates was one of intense hatred and a desire to have them suffer. To suffer the way they have been forced to suffer after being victimized. Completely understandable? Yes. Completely necessary? Maybe. Completely practical? No.
Alabama Commissioner of Corrections Richard Allen said that right now, with this year's available revenue of $412 million, he is $15 million short of what he needs. According to June 2009's Alabama Department of Corrections fiscal report, current costs are around $44 a day, per inmate. The daily inmate maintenance cost has increased at a rate $2.71 per year over the past five years. This can in part be blamed on the increasing cost of healthcare in our country. Go figure.
Nationally Alabama's prisons are the most crowded. Their 26,400 inmates put it operating at 191 percent of its designed capacity. These numbers mean it costs around $1.2 million a day to run Alabama's prisons.
Where does all this money go?
Personnel costs for 2008 were $172 million. They increased $13 million from the previous year, primarily because of an increase in staffing and the increase in the cost of health insurance and retirement.
In addition to the personnel costs, the prison's other major expenditures included inmate health costs (accounting for 21.6% or $88.9 million), utilities and communications (accounting for 4.7% or $19.3 million) and food and supplies for inmates (accounting for 4.7% or $19.4 million).
For some reason this seems, to me, to be a bigger problem than a plasma TV or an LCD one.
Cold hard truth
As I have admitted before, and will continue to admit, there are reasons for our justice system. There are and will always be people in our society who refuse to play by the rules. They are brought up in violence and in violence they shall remain.
But what about the others? Let's go back to the numbers.
In the Alabama Department of Corrections 2007 Annual Report, the top three prison sentences were two years (9.75 percent), three years (14.61 percent) and 15 years (10.40 percent). Bottom line, people are getting out of prison whether we like it or not.
What happens when they get out? Many inmates never find jobs and are forced to return to former lifestyles, which inevitably return them back to prison. Proof of this is found statistically when looking at our national recidivism rate which is at 67.5 percent. Canada's is 35 percent for men and 20 percent for women.
Halfway houses and advocacy groups in Alabama such as the Alabama Prison Project work to ease the transitions back into normal life, but all of them are underfunded and unappreciated by some.
In the 2008 fiscal report I found nothing about how much money was allocated by the federal or state government towards specifically inmate education. When I typed "education" into the find box I was taken to a tiny paragraph section talking about education and I found some numbers.
87 percent of all inmates entering prison do not have a high school diploma or GED. That comes out to about 18,379 individuals, 11,400 who are black.
I then saw that 9,040 inmates are enrolled in the Adult Basic Education program and last year the ADOC awarded 980 GEDs. I guess any inch is a step towards a mile.
$540,000 was awarded last year by the Department of Justice Prisoner Reentry Initiative, which according to the report was a, "Competitive grant funded under the President’s Prisoner Reentry Initiative to provide services and programs to facilitate inmates’ successful reintegration into society." Sounds like newspeak to me.
In 2007 we committed $647 billion to our defense budget. In 2007, the U.S. spent $2.26 trillion on health care, or $7,439 per person.
Now compare the $540,000 allocated by Bush for a prison "re-entry program" to how much he spent on protecting our, well I don't know what we are protecting ourselves against. But it seems we can't even protect Americans from other Americans!
Future of Alabama Prisons
The crowded prisons are also understaffed. The ratio of inmates to officers is 10 to 1, compared to 5 to 1 nationally.
Gov. Bob Riley, will present his budget proposals for fiscal 2011 in January, and we can only hope he has a better understanding of our prisons, not fueled by those making money off of them.
According to reports, Riley plans to close the gap by hiring new officers, but he said the prison system has managed to get by each year without prison closings or layoffs. We also have never faced an economy like this Riley. Wake up! Times are different!
Allen said the prison system's budget problems could be eased in two ways:
1. Alabama expand community corrections and drug court programs allowing offenders to stay at home and work while under close supervision rather than going to prison.
2. Judges started following the state's voluntary sentencing guidelines rather than giving sentences longer than those recommended.
Who is calling the shots in this state?
Remember, this is a country where the federal government spent over $19 billion dollars in 2003 on the "War on Drugs", at a rate of about $600 per second. According to the War on Drugs clock already, on Jan. 3, our federal government has spent $198.5 million on this never ending fight.
We may see the prison population drop for the first time in four decades. In 2008 the United States sat at 1.6 million state and federal inmates. This economic situation will be interesting. Already in Texas the parole rate, once at 15 percent has risen to 30 percent to get inmates out of prisons and back into society. In Mississippi, a sentencing law which once required drug offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences, has already been reduced to less than 25 percent. In Mississippi!?
That being said, I will keep you updated on this process and what is going on in our state. What I will leave you with is a few questions. Knowing now the costs per inmate, per day, and knowing that we are $15 million short to house the people you are told to hate and judge, are you going to give? Are you going to write our president or your congressman and woman and demand they allocate more funds to keep these monsters behind bars?
No, probably not, because we are too busy making decisions ourselves. It's not your fault you are distracted. But now that you have read this and know the facts and hardships facing our state, what is your new responsibility.
I know that right now I am going to write a similar letter to President Obama saying the same things I have said to you. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot forget about these people and just expect them to be taken care of. You cannot demand justice and give nothing to help it. How much money are these victim's rights people donating to the ADOC? I cannot speak for them, but I can assume.
I am rambling now. I will keep you up to date.
Cheers
You wrote..."Are you going to write our president or your congressman and woman and demand they allocate more funds to keep these monsters behind bars?"
ReplyDeleteMonsters? Some should never see the light of day because of what they have done. There are many more, who for a variety of reasons, have done evil and are being justly punished. And there are many who will get out and become productive citizens adding to the tax base instead of being supported by our taxes.
You want to make a difference? Go inside a prison and meet some of these men and women and offer to mentor one who is returning to your community. You will not only contribute to change a life, but change a generation.