The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

``Michigan remains one of the few northern states with a lock-them-up policy,'' said Marcia Howard, the author of State Policy Reports, a Washington newsletter affiliated with the National Governors' Association, which compiled the numbers. ``The state really sends a lot of people off to prison, and it's costing a lot of money.''

Michigan's incarceration rate of 489 prisoners for every 100,000 residents also pushed the state to No. 11 nationally in that category in 2003, the report found. It followed nine southern states and Delaware (No. 10).

Given the size of the Michigan system, it's no wonder Gov. Jennifer Granholm and lawmakers have been struggling with how to best finance prisons without bankrupting the state budget.

In the last month, negotiations on the 2006 Corrections Department budget have focused mainly on dueling proposals that would solve the budget problems by closing facilities in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

Granholm wants to end the state contract with a privately run youth prison in Lake County, which would save an estimated $7.5 million next year. GOP leaders want to close the Newberry Corrections Facility and nearby Camp Manistique in the Upper Peninsula. Those closures would save about $12 million annually out of a proposed $1.7 billion corrections budget.

A state House and Senate conference committee will decide which prison to close in the coming weeks, but Granholm has vowed to use her veto power to fight the closure of Newberry.

Observers say if lawmakers and the governor are looking to save money, they should consider shrinking the prison population by releasing more individuals who are eligible for parole.

``Michigan is very punitive compared to other states,'' said Barbara Levine, executive director of the Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, a Lansing group that lobbies against prison expansion. ``We think a lot of this is because of Michigan's parole rates. They remain fairly low. Commitment rates have actually stayed down for the last several years, but the parole rates haven't moved at all even though there are thousands of people eligible for parole who never leave.''

In fiscal year 2003, the 10-member Michigan Parole Board granted parole to 12,788 or 51.8 percent of eligible prisoners. That is up slightly from the 48.4 percent approval rate in 2002, but far below 1990's 68 percent.

Michigan's parole approvals have dropped significantly over the last decade as the board tightened its standards in response to high-profile cases in the early-1990s where paroled felons committed violent crimes after leaving prison.

While huge, the state's prison population has reached a plateau. Between 2002 and 2003, Michigan saw a 2.4 percent decline in the number of prisoners sentenced.

Nationally there was a 1.6 percent increase in the number of individuals sentenced to state prisons between 2002 and 2003. Only New York (-2.8 percent), Rhode Island (-3 percent) and Connecticut (-3.5 percent) saw bigger drops in prisoner numbers than Michigan.

Michigan officials say the declining prison population is good news considering that the state's prisons are nearly full.

``Our population is close to capacity, but I think that's how a corrections system should run,'' said Russ Marlan, a Corrections Department spokesman. ``The fact that 2003 was our first prison population decline in 20 years, and then we saw it go down again in 2004, shows we're making great strides in controlling the prison population.''

Observers say the mammoth size of the Michigan system is a direct result of the prison buildups of the 1990s and tougher judicial sentencing in response to political pressure to get tough on crime. While the building has stopped, the other factors remain.

``It's pretty crowded,'' said Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization, the corrections officers' union. ``When we built all those tents and pole barns to handle the overcrowding, they were supposed to have a shelf life of five to eight years, and 15 years later we're still using them. Nobody likes crowding, but that's where we're at.''