The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

While corrections officials can't estimate how much they hope to save by the new conservation efforts, they say every penny is important in the effort to balance the state's out-of-whack budget.

Their plan:
Extinguish lights on Christmas trees and other holiday displays in prison lobbies and offices.
Remove refrigerated vending machines from lobbies, prisoner housing units and visitation rooms.
Eliminate refrigerated water coolers.
Shut off TVs, microwaves, toasters and other electric devices when prison lights go out at 10 p.m.
Limit the use of electric buffers to clean floors.
Remove clothing washers and dryers from prisoner housing units and send the prison blues out to a lower-cost laundry operation.

"We need to take the reduction of energy very serious," Deputy Director Dennis Straub wrote this week to the state's prison wardens.

"Please implement these measures immediately." The department says wardens will be given a brief time to determine whether they will have any problems implementing the changes. "I don't have an exact date, but it will happen soon," said Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Corrections Department.

A prisoner advocacy group is criticizing the moves, saying they amount to added punishment. "It seems punitive, and these are just minimal cost saving measures that actually cause more harm for prisoners who have already lost a lot of privileges that we in the free world have," said Natalie Holbrook, associate at the Ann Arbor-based American Friends Service Committee's Michigan Criminal Justice Program.
She said removing food and beverage machines from visitation areas will diminish the "social setting with family members. It's ridiculous, for the most part."

Meanwhile, a House committee Wednesday unanimously approved and sent to the full House legislation that would end the sales tax exemption inmates now receive when purchasing items from prison stores.If adopted, it would generate $700,000 annually for the state.

The combined actions may appear penny-ante to some. But there are plenty of reasons corrections officials are trying to squeeze out savings.
Consider:
Michigan's prison system is housing an all-time high 51,500 inmates -- 173 percent more than two decades ago. The department says the state will likely run out of prison beds by September, a full year before expected.

It costs $1.9 billion to run the state's prison system, eating up one of every five dollars in the state's main checkbook. Taxpayers spend $5 million a day on prisons.

For those reasons, Gov. Jennifer Granholm is proceeding with plans to open the cell doors this summer and fall to about 5,500 nonviolent, low-risk inmates.

It's designed to save the state $92 million. But her recommended corrections budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 still calls for a 4 percent spending increase.

That means the state will continue to pay more to run its prisons than it does to support its 15 public universities.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070331/METRO/703310358/1022/POLITICS
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