The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Her study shows that for every 100,000 people in Massachusetts, the state has 233 inmates. In comparison, Louisiana's rate is 801 people for every 100,000 in population, Mississippi's rate is 768 and Texas incarcerates 702 people for 100,000 in population. Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Nebraska have lower incarceration rates.
The lowest incarceration rate in the country is Maine which incarcerates 149 inmates for every 100,000. Maine spends 2 percent of its budget on the correction system, Massachusetts spends 3.4 percent while the national average is 3.5 percent of state spending. Nebraska, which incarcerates 228 people for every 100,000, spends 2.5 percent on its corrections system.
The national incarceration average is 482 people for every 100,000 in population, based on the latest statistics available at the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Texas spends 6.1 percent of its state funds on prisons, Mississippi spends 2.3 percent and Louisiana spends 4.2 percent.
New Hamsphire spends 1.9 percent of its state spending on corrections,, Connecticut - which incarcerates 389 people for every 100,000 in population, spends 2.9 percent; Rhode Island spends 2.6 percent; and Vermont spends 3.3 percent.
Francis Carney, the executive director of the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission, said that the rate for Massachusetts is consistent with its history and that of the region.
"Massachusetts has had a longstanding tradition along with other New England states of having low incarceration rates. It is not a new phenomenon," Carney said.
"Judges tend to explore alternatives to incarceration that will hold offenders accountable maybe more so than other states," Carney said.
Howard agreed that the report doesn't hold any surprises.
"It says that Massachusetts is a state with a relatively low crime rate in a region of the country with low crime rates and that it is a state that incarcerates very few people in a region of the country that incarcerates very few people."
"What is out of line with Massachusetts is that it spends as much as a typical state that has both a higher crime rate and a higher incarceration rate," Howard said. "It seems to be spending relatively more."
Diane Wiffin, the spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections, said that 73 percent of the money the state spends on its correctional system goes for staff salaries, 15 percent pay for healthcare costs and the remaining 12 percent is spent on utilities, food, programs and other smaller items.
In fiscal 2004, the Department of Corrections budget was nearly $428 million and of that amount, $310 million was spent on staff, according to the Governor's Commission on Corrections Reform which issued a report last June.

As of June 30, 2004, Massachusetts had 10,365 prisoners in its state prison system compared to 10,511 people 12 months before. That was a 1.7 percent drop in the number of inmates. Nationally there was a 1.6 percent increase in the number of individuals sentenced to state prisons between 2002 and 2003.
In 2003, Massachusetts admitted 2,185 new prisoners into the system while it released 2,302, according to U.S. Department of Justice data.
Steven Kenneway, who heads the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union - which represents about 5,000 members - speculates that the high cost of running the prisons is in part related to a shortage of correctional officers and the overtime pay the state has to pay for that shortage.
And the shortage is getting more severe each month, he said.
"The numbers are staggering," Kenneway said. "DOC (the Department of
Corrections) is hiring but it is trying to play catchup and it is so far behind it is ridiculous."
"It is actually dangerous," Kenneway said.
He said that counselors in treatment settings have been attacked when no correctional officer was present and one correctional officer was stabbed during a night shift when she was doing checks alone.
Kenneway said that one prison will lose through retirement 20 correctional officers this year. He estimated that between last year and by the end of this year 300 correctional officers will leave the system..
He said the system is already 500 down in correction officers compared with four years ago.
The state, he said, is forced to hire people overtime.
"It's burning out my officers and makes for a dangerous situation," Kenneway said. "I place the blame on (Gov) Mitt Romney and the Commissioner of Corrections (Kathleen Denihy) because neither one of them has a clue" on how the correctional system operates.
The state has 17 facilities of which two are maximum security.

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