The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

The state, meanwhile, has been left to pay the multimillion tab for securing thousands of empty prison beds across the state. In response, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has a plan sure to stir controversy in places where prisons remain the largest employers.
He wants to shut some down.
In his first budget plan, Spitzer proposed creating a commission to study the state's sprawling prison system and mark some of its 70 facilities for closure by year's end. The likely targets? Medium and minimum security facilities, places like Fishkill, Woodbourne and Wallkill.
But the idea proved less than popular with the Legislature, especially in the state Senate, where upstate Republicans hold sway. Lawmakers made sure a closure commission was not in the budget that passed April 1.
Few, however, expect that will be the end of the effort to shutter prisons.
The prison population has fallen to 63,304 from a peak of 71,472 in 1999, a decline of 11 percent. In that same period, the number of inmates in medium and minimum security prisons fell, 16 percent and 34 percent, respectively.
The maximum security population actually rose 2 percent, a trend attributed to tough-on-crime laws that keep the worst offenders behind bars.
As inmate counts sank, the state saved money by letting hundreds of correction jobs go vacant. Closing facilities would be the next logical step.
But any talk of prison closures can carry serious political consequences. Correctional services has a $3 billion budget and employs 31,500.
That's more than the departments of environment, health and transportation combined. It includes some 3,400 in Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties.
Plus some, such as the powerful union that represents correction officers, argue that the population decline is only temporary. They point to reports of rising crime rates and a slight uptick in the number of inmates in state custody last year.
"We don't believe there's a need to close these facilities," said Larry Flanagan Jr., president of the New York Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association. "There are times of rise and fall in the prison population."
With such concerns in mind, the Legislature rejected the governor's attempt to let a commission do the dirty work of remaking the prison system. Lawmakers told Spitzer to come up with his own plan and then come to them for approval.
So, a lengthy debate appears likely.
In the meantime, prison reform advocates predict the overall decline will only accelerate. That's provided that the state continues to scale back its harshest drug laws and expand its use of early release programs.
"The prison system should not be used for economic development," said Robert Gangi, who leads the Correctional Association of New York, a state-sanctioned prisoner advocacy group. "There needs to be some means to helping the upstate economy, rather than maintaining prisons that are no longer needed."