Priorities and Public Safety: Massachusetts Corrections Spending in Context

By Len Engle and Richard Luedeman

The Boston Foundation enlisted the Crime and Justice Institute at Community Resources for Justice, a Boston-based research and policy organization, to examine the cost of corrections services, criminal justice policies and corrections spending against other vital services the state supports as well as outcomes and best practices.  The result is Priorities and Public Safety: Reentry and the Rising Costs of our Corrections System, published in December 2009 by the Boston Foundation and available at http://cjinstitute. org/files/CorrectionsCosts.pdf.  Here is a summary.

Safety at any price.  This motto has guided Massachusetts corrections spending for the past 15 years.  The state has poured taxpayer money in the four corrections agencies – the Department of Correction, the 13 sheriffs’ departments which run the county jail system, the Parole Board and the Probation Department.  Yet during that period few policy makers stopped to ask what return the Commonwealth was getting for its significant investment.  Funding for corrections agencies has always constituted a large and, at times, controversial portion of state budgets.  With the recent economic crisis, the need to avoid ineffective and wasteful criminal justice policies has become extraordinarily urgent, both in Massachusetts and throughout the nation.

The FY 2010 budget for Massachusetts illustrates the privileged status given to corrections agencies in the process of making these tradeoffs. The Department of Correction was cut only 1.9% and the Probation Department only 8%, while the Higher Education budget was reduced by 17%, the Public Health budget by 13%, and the Local Aid budget by 28%.

This year’s budget pattern merely continues the trend in budget increases in Massachusetts corrections. Over the past 10 years (adjusted for inflation), the Department of Correction budget has grown more than 12% and the Probation Department budget by more than a whopping 160%, while Higher Education, Public Health, and Local Aid all faced modest declines in funding.

More spending on corrections sounds tough and might be fiscally responsible, but the data do not show that the added costs have actually contributed to public safety. First, we are not getting better public safety despite the spending. Recidivism in Massachusetts remained flat between 1998 and 2002 (after which recidivism data has not been provided).  Parole revocations in 2008 were actually slightly higher than in 1998.  And probation surrenders have experienced only an insignificant decline, from 58,622 in 1998 to 56,654 in 2008.

Perhaps most shocking of all, however, is that rising costs were not a result of a fast-growing incarcerated population. Accompanying the multi-million dollar budget increases was a modest 5% increase in prison and jail populations and a 14% decrease in the number of probationers under risk supervision.  Moreover, prison and jail overcrowding continues to be a problem.

Several other states’ efforts reveal that the upward trend in corrections spending need not be viewed as a political inevitability. Virginia, Washington, and Texas have all recently relaxed probation sentencing laws.  New York, Maryland, and Nevada have amended their mandatory minimum guidelines for low-level offenses.  Colorado and Oregon have expanded earned release time eligibility for prisoners while Kansas and Connecticut have focused on developing reentry initiatives to stem revocations and recidivism.  Most inspiring of all is Michigan, whose policies over the last five to 10 years correspond with declines in prison populations and parole revocations.  Their reforms have allowed officials to close 13 correctional facilities (saving $500 million), while doubling funding to evidence-based reentry programming.

To its credit, Massachusetts has made some moves in the right direction. Parole rates have increased from 46% in 1998 to 70% in 2008.  In addition, the Department of Correction has recently developed a plan to improve offender reentry through effective risk/needs assessment and job training.

Moving forward, however, the magnitude of Massachusetts’ reforms needs to match the magnitude of the underlying problem.  Policymakers should emphasize recidivism reduction as a central goal, routinely collect and share data, base their decisions on research, foster collaboration within communities, and shift the focus from prison and jail infrastructure to providing greater access to supervised reentry programs aimed at offenders’ specific levels of risk and need.

Leonard W. Engel, Esq. is Senior Policy Analyst and Richard Luedeman is an Associate at the Crime and Justice Institute.