The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

As of June 30, 2007, there were 38,007 state inmates -- 32,651 in more than 40 prisons, field units, work release centers and one privately run prison. The rest were held for the state in local and regional jails.

The Virginia Department of Corrections, now the state's largest agency with more than 13,000 employees, manages a population of felons larger than the cities of Manassas, Petersburg, Fredericksburg or Winchester.

"More offenders are being committed to prison, and they are incarcerated, on average, for longer periods," Deputy Secretary of Public Safety Barry Green said.

The department's annual budget topped $1 billion this year for the first time. Virginia, however, is not imprisoning its residents at a rate higher than other states.

According to the most recent federal figures available, 472 men and women were in prison for every 100,000 Virginians. The national average was almost 500. Virginia's per capita spending on prisons ranks 20th among states and its crime rate 37th.

Officials say that the equivalent of a new prison is needed for every 1,100 additional inmates. Each such prison costs roughly $100 million to build and $25 million a year to operate.

After the 2010 completion of a new prison in Grayson County, more prisons will be needed if the forecast for 2013 proves accurate. However, the Department of Corrections and others caution that it is difficult to predict five years ahead.

Del. David B. Albo, R-Fairfax, says, contrary to popular belief, Virginia prisons are not holding many, if any, nonviolent, first-time property or drug-ossession offenders.

"These prisons are basically full of very bad guys," said Albo, chairman of the Virginia State Crime Commission and the House Courts of Justice Committee. "The public policy choice is, do you think they should be in prison or out in the neighborhoods?"

"If you think that they should be in prison, you're going to have to build the prisons," he said.

"It's going to require building one prison a year. I don't like that fact. But I think that spending a hundred million a year to keep violent criminals and drug dealers out of my neighborhood is worth it."

According to state figures, violent offenders are forming a growing part of the prison population. Since 1994, the percentage of violent offenders in state prisons has increased from 69 percent to 79 percent (with burglary counted as a violent offense).

But critics, including Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project in Washington, insists Virginia and other states are imprisoning many people who are not dangerous public-safety risks.

Mauer agrees that there are few first-time, nonviolent offenders in prisons. "The question is, even if somebody is there because they're a secondor third-time car thief, is that still the best way to spend $25,000 a year?" he said.

"We should be looking at other intensive supervision options in the community that can be far less costly than incarceration and arguably more productive in keeping the offender in the community," he said.

Mauer contends that "it's not a question of prison or do nothing -- it's what else could we do as an alternative [to prison] that both protects the public and changes behavior in a less costly way." While the numbers are sobering, in some rural areas prisons are a welcome source of employment. It is, however, a hardship for those in the urban eastern and northern parts of Virginia who have friends or relatives in far away prisons.

In addition to the growing number of state prisoners, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is considering putting 1,000 nonstate inmates into state prisons through 2010 as a way to help save $19 million a year.

Less than a decade ago,Virginia had more than 3,000 surplus beds -- roughly one-tenth of the system's total capacity -- and rented them to other states and the District of Columbia. Those inmates are long gone, their bunks filling up with Virginia criminals.

Cells were available to rent, in part, because Virginia built prisons in the mid-to-late 1990s anticipating a crime wave that did not occur. Instead of climbing as predicted, violent crime here and across the U.S. dropped dramatically from 1993 to 2000.

However, from 2000 to 2006, the number of violent crimes in Virginia rose by 8.1 percent. (While the rate of violent crime per capita remained largely steady, the total number of violent crimes rose at least as fast as the population in general.)

At the same time, the number of arrests increased by 14.3 percent. Also, the number of individuals sentenced to prison each year rose 42 percent, from 9,183 to 13,071.

Nearly half of the inmates entering Virginia prisons violated terms of their probation. Most committed a new crime, but 15 percent to 20 percent had technical violations, such as repeatedly failing drug tests.

The Kaine administration, other policymakers and the Department of Corrections are trying to keep freed prisoners from winding up back behind bars as a way of cutting the need for more prisons.

Not only are the number of prison admissions rising, but with the end of parole and new sentencing guidelines for crimes committed on or after Jan. 1, 1995, the length of time served by inmates has been growing, particularly for violent and repeat offenders.

All totaled, as of June 30, 2007, one of 44 adult Virginians were in prison, jail or under state or local probation supervision.

"If we have to build more prisons to keep our citizens safe, we should do that," said Green, the deputy secretary. "But if we find better ways to prevent reoffending, we should act on those first."

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-01-07-0147
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