The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

At the same time, the Act provided for the abolition of the Parole Commission on November 1,1992. The phase out of the Commission has been extended by statuteseveral times. The status of the Commission beyond November 1, 2005remains unresolved despite the Commission having taken over supervisionof all DC offenders in addition to the remaining 4,000 Old Law offenders.Presently, the Commission has over 100 employees and a budget of over $10 million. When the U. S. Sentencing Guidelines were imposed for federaldefendants whose criminal activities took place subsequent to November 1,1987, parole was eliminated. Early release was limited to approximately 47days of good time each year and the sentences themselves were increasedappreciably. The majority of federal inmates are non-violent low-level drug
offenders with very long sentences. Moreover, the majority of this segmentof the federal inmate population is being incarcerated for the first time.

Thousands of people in prison are serving life sentences for non-violentoffenses without the possibility of parole. The vast majority of these peopleare also first time offenders.Ninety-seven per cent (97%) of all federal inmates are eventuallyreleased. 45,000 federal inmates were released last year in the United States.
Presently, there are 181,000 federal detainees. The cost to house these inmates increases exponentially as they age. Total cost to U. S. taxpayersfor federal incarceration is upwards of $7.25 billion yearly. Re-entry of mostly indigent elderly inmates is significantly affecting state budgets. After many years of incarceration, inmates tend to lose all support. Theirwives and children abandon them. They lose their ability to find and keep ajob because they are banned from most jobs requiring a license and havereceived no alternative training in prison. There is no money allotted to the
federal prison system for rehabilitation programs.

Reinstitution of the old parole and good time laws would reduce the
inmate population considerably. Those statues, with minor changes, would reward those inmates who have shown positive institutional behavior with earlier release. Although early release would not be guaranteed, it would allow a second chance to those that prove they deserve that chance. Supervision of all offenders would revert once again to an existing agency with the expertise to determine the appropriate time for return to the community without endangering the public safety. It has been determined that this plan of parole and increased good time will save U. S. taxpayers upwards of $2 billion per year by taking mainly non-violent first-offenders out of the prison system earlier and enabling them to become part of the productive mainstream of American
life.
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