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Time: 12:04 pm

Results for costs of imprisonment

5 results found

Author: California State Auditor. Bureau of State Audits

Title: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Inmates Sentenced Under the Three Strikes Law and a Small Number of Inmates Receiving Speciality Health Care Represent Significant Costs

Summary: As requested by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, the California State Auditor presents this audit report concerning the effect of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (Corrections) operations on the state budget. This report concludes that inmates sentenced under the three strikes law, and a small number of inmates receiving specialty health care, represent significant costs. Specifically, about 25 percent of the inmate population was incarcerated under the three strikes law, which requires longer terms for individuals convicted of any felony if they were previously convicted of a serious or violent crime as defined in state law. On average, we estimate that these individuals’ sentences are nine years longer because of the requirements of the three strikes law and that these additional years of incarceration represent a cost to the State of $19.2 billion. Furthermore, the current conviction for which many of these individuals are incarcerated is not for a serious or violent crime, as defined in state law, and many were convicted of multiple serious or violent crimes that occurred on the same day. Our review also found that of the $529 million that California Prison Health Care Services incurred for contracted specialty health care providers in fiscal year 2007–08, $469 million could be associated with individual inmates. Among the inmates with specialty health care costs, 70 percent averaged slightly more than $1,000 per inmate and cost $42 million in total, while the remaining 30 percent of inmates amassed specialty health care costs totaling more than $427 million. Furthermore, specialty health care costs for 1,175 inmates, or just one-half of 1 percent of the inmates incarcerated during the year, totaled $185 million. In addition, specialty health care costs totaled $8.8 million for the 72 inmates who died during the last quarter of the year, exceeding $1 million in the case of one inmate. Finally, a significant amount of custody staff overtime is the result of a medical guarding and transportation workload that does not have associated authorized positions. Overtime is also necessary when custody staff positions are vacant, but is decreased by staff who do not use the full amount of leave they earn. However, the unused leave of custody staff—increased by the additional leave provided through the furlough program—represents a liability to the State that we estimate is at least $546 million and could be more than $1 billion.

Details: Sacramento; California State Auditor, 2010. 80p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 7, 2010 at: http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2009-107.2.pdf

Year: 2010

Country: United States

URL: http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2009-107.2.pdf

Shelf Number: 119755

Keywords:
Costs of Imprisonment
Health Care, Inmates
Inmates, Medical Care
Three-Stikes La

Author: Males, Mike

Title: Can California County Jails Absorb Low-Level State Prisoners?

Summary: California spends nearly $1.3 billion per year to imprison 26,300 offenders whose primary sentencing offense was a low-level property or drug crime. For nearly 11,000 of these, the low-level sentencing offenses were classed as second or third strikes. The advisability of imposing long, strike-enhanced sentences for low-level second or third offenses is the subject of other publications. This publication focuses on the remaining 15,400 low-level, non-strike prisoners who constituted 9% of the state prison population as of December 31, 2009, and cost taxpayers nearly $750 million annually to lock up (CDCR, 2011). California counties vary 13-fold in their rates of sentencing such low-level offenders to California state prison, from 227 per 100,000 population in Kings County to 17 per 100,000 in Contra Costa (see Appendix). More than one-fourth of the total prisoners from Calaveras county were sentenced for low-level, non-strike offenses, five times the percentage in Los Angeles. Counties are imposing radically varying burdens on state taxpayers to incarcerate their lowpriority offenders at $50,000 each per year. This publication addresses the question of whether sufficient jail capacity is available at the county level to which state prisoners can be transferred in order to help achieve Governor Jerry Brown’s goal of reducing state prison populations by moving low-level offenders to local jails (CCPOA, 2011). Under Governor Jerry Brown’s realignment policies, counties will no longer be allowed to commit certain categories of offenders to state prison, but instead will be required to develop county-based alternatives. A second question involves how low-level offenders should be handled in terms of incarceration versus alternative sentencing.

Details: San Francisco: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 2011. 6p.

Source: Internet Resource: Legislative Policy Study: Accessed July 25, 2012 at: http://www.cjcj.org/files/Can_California_County_Jails_Absorb_Low-Level_State_Prisoners.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: United States

URL: http://www.cjcj.org/files/Can_California_County_Jails_Absorb_Low-Level_State_Prisoners.pdf

Shelf Number: 125765

Keywords:
Costs of Criminal Justice
Costs of Imprisonment
Jails (California)
Prisons
Sentencing

Author: Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending

Title: Parolable Lifers in Michigan: paying the Price of Unchecked Discretion

Summary: Hundreds of Michigan prisoners sentenced to "parolable life" terms have been eligible for release for one, two or even three decades. As a group, they are aging, low-risk and guilty of offenses comparable to those for which thousands of other people have served a term of years and been paroled. Each parole board decision to incarcerate a lifer for another five years - often based on nothing more than a single board member's review of a file - costs taxpayers roughly $200,000. Americans have certain expectations of government. In times of tight budgets and soaring costs, the one most discussed is cost-effectiveness. We want to spend as few taxpayer dollars as possible to fulfill governmental functions. We also want transparency, so we know how decisions are being made; accountability, so that decisions are subject to review and, if necessary, correction; consistency, so that outcomes are predictable and similarly situated citizens are similarly treated; and objectivity, so that decisions are based on evidence, not emotions or unsupported assumptions. The parole decision-making process for lifers violates all these norms. It is one of the few areas where a group of unelected officials has virtually unlimited power over people's lives and the public purse. Over the last few decades, a series of policy changes with no proven impact on public safety has undermined the parole process for prisoners generally and for lifers in particular. The solutions are simple and straightforward: return to practices that protected both public safety and taxpayers' pocketbooks.

Details: Lansing, MI: CAPPS, 2014. 40p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 13, 2014 at: http://www.capps-mi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Parolable-Lifers-in-Michigan-Paying-the-price-of-unchecked-discretion.pdf

Year: 2014

Country: United States

URL: http://www.capps-mi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Parolable-Lifers-in-Michigan-Paying-the-price-of-unchecked-discretion.pdf

Shelf Number: 131898

Keywords:
Costs of Imprisonment
Decision-Making
Judges
Life Imprisonment
Life Sentence
Parole
Parole Board

Author: Chaparro, Sergio

Title: Castigos Irracionales: Leyes de Drogas y Encarcerlmiento en America Latina (People deprived of freedom for drug offenses

Summary: The new investigation of the Collective on Persons Detained, Prosecuted and Imprisoned presents statistical information on detention and imprisonment for drug offenses in Latin America. Existing evidence shows that, at the global level, drug policy has involved various costs ranging from social, economic, and institutional costs. The use of prison sanctions entails significant costs for people being detained and imprisoned. It means not only deprivation of liberty but also the violation of other basic rights such as the right to health, limitation to the right to free development of personality, right to freedom of conscience, right to freedom of expression and Charge for their relatives. It also implies, Important costs for their dependents, families and communities who are impoverished by the incarceration of their relative. Our latest study looks at these issues with national and regional data and provides information on how certain sectors are affected by these policies, such as women and youth. The latest information from the DSBB shows how prison rates for drug crime have increased in the countries studied, while a regional debate reinforces the need to explore alternative policies and, in particular, alternatives to incarceration. Countries in the region often impose high penalties for misdemeanors or excessive precautionary measures on people who participate in the lower links of drug trafficking networks (such as mules or small traders).

Details: s.l.: Colectivo de Estudios Drogas y Derecho, 2017. 84p.

Source: Internet Resource: Informe Regional 2017: Accessed March 17, 2017 at: http://www.drogasyderecho.org/files/Castigos_Irracionales.pdf (in Spanish)

Year: 2017

Country: Latin America

URL: http://www.drogasyderecho.org/files/Castigos_Irracionales.pdf

Shelf Number: 144480

Keywords:
Costs of Corrections
Costs of Imprisonment
Drug Offenders
Drugs and Crime
Prisoners

Author: Mueller-Smith, Michael

Title: The Criminal and Labor Market Impacts of Incarceration

Summary: This paper investigates the pre- and post-release impacts of incarceration on criminal behavior, economic wellbeing and family formation using new data from Harris County, Texas. The research design identifies exogenous variation in the extensive and intensive margins of incarceration by leveraging the random assignment of defendants to courtrooms. I develop a new data-driven estimation procedure to address multidimensional and non-monotonic sentencing patterns observed in the courtrooms in my data. My findings indicate that incarceration generates modest incapacitation effects, which are offset in the long-run by an increased likelihood of defendants reoffending after being released. Additional evidence finds that incarceration reduces post-release employment and wages, increases take-up of food stamps, decreases likelihood of marriage and increases the likelihood of divorce. Based on changes in defendant behavior alone, I estimate that a one-year prison term for marginal defendants conservatively generates $56,200 to $66,800 in social costs, which would require substantial general deterrence in the population to at least be welfare neutral.

Details: New York: Department of Economics, Columbia University, 2014. 72p.

Source: Internet Resource; Job Market Paper: Accessed September 15, 2017 at: http://www.columbia.edu/~mgm2146/incar.pdf

Year: 2014

Country: United States

URL: http://www.columbia.edu/~mgm2146/incar.pdf

Shelf Number: 147341

Keywords:
Costs of Criminal Justice
Costs of Imprisonment
Criminal Record
Ex-offender Employment