Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.
Date: November 25, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:02 pm
Time: 8:02 pm
Results for budgets
1 results foundAuthor: Leachman, Michael Title: Improving Budget Analysis of State Criminal Justice Reforms: A Strategy for Better Outcomes and Saving Money Summary: This report details how a change to the way states evaluate the budgetary effects of proposed laws could help states find better budget solutions while protecting public safety and decreasing our incarceration rate. According to the report, “Improving Budget Analysis of State Criminal Justice Reforms: Strategies for Improving Outcomes and Saving States Money,” poorly performed state evaluations of the budgetary consequences of criminal justice legislation are causing some states to spend unnecessarily on prisons while cutting other vital state programs. Earlier this year, for example, legislators from both sides of the political aisle in Maryland sought to pass a law that would have allowed nonprison sanctions for individuals who commit technical parole violations, such as missing a meeting with their parole officer or failing to complete community service. More than one-third of the people behind bars around our nation are there for similar technical violations, not for new crimes. This Maryland bill would have allowed the state to put a portion of the $1 billion it spends annually on corrections to better use while keeping the public safe. If implemented, this reform could have started saving the state money within three years, since that’s when most people return to prison for technical violations. But a misguided state budget estimate of the bill’s impact considered only the up-front costs, ignoring the future savings and thus incorrectly concluding that the program would cost too much. As a result, the bill was scaled back to only three counties. Now, the rest of Maryland will continue to send individuals who violate parole conditions back to prison. According to the new report released today, Maryland isn’t the only state where this is happening. Many state budget analyses tend to focus on the upfront start-up costs of a bill, but fail to examine the later savings these programs will bring—even savings that could be realized in the following year. The upshot: When states examine policies through a cost-only lens, instead of a cost-effectiveness lens, legislators and the public are more likely to reject policies that would actually save money overall. Amid this mess, however, there is hope. Bipartisan leaders in some states, among them Texas, Mississippi, and Ohio, recognized the short- and long-term benefits of cutting prison spending. Over the last few years, these states implemented reforms to cut their incarceration rates and their costs—all the while protecting public safety and reducing recidivism. Such reforms—like providing effective addiction treatment instead of prison to more people convicted of drug crimes and increasing parole eligibility for elderly prisons who no longer pose safety risks—free up precious state dollars to reallocate to other societal resources such as education, infrastructure, or returning tax dollars back to working families. Details: Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; American Civil Liberties Union, 2012 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 18, 2012 at: http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/improvingbudgetanalysis_20120110.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/improvingbudgetanalysis_20120110.pdf Shelf Number: 123657 Keywords: BudgetsCosts of Criminal JusticeCriminal Justice ReformCriminal Justice Systems (U.S.)Expenditures in Criminal Justice |