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February 05, 2009
MI: State should expand Parole Board to cut prison stays and costs
State should expand Parole Board to cut prison stays and costs
February 4, 2009
Michigan's $2-billion-a-year prison system holds thousands of inmates who have served their minimum sentence and are eligible for release. Not all of them merit paroles, of course, but many do, costing taxpayers millions of dollars that could be better spent on higher education and other state services. To give these cases a thorough and timely review, Gov. Jennifer Granholm ought to expand the 10-member Parole Board.
Longer prison stays, dictated by past Parole Board practices, are largely responsible for Michigan spending hundreds of millions of dollars more on prisons than surrounding states -- states with crime rates no higher than Michigan's.
At least 12,000 inmates who are eligible for parole remain in Michigan's 41 prisons, even though parole rates have increased over the last year. If even half of them could be safely released, it would save the state nearly $200 million a year.
With 49,000 inmates, Michigan has one of the nation's highest incarceration rates. The Parole Board must determine, as soon as possible, who should stay in prison and who can go home. To do the job, the Parole Board needs to expand by two, four or even six members.
Delaying the review of worthy cases is immoral and expensive. Even under normal circumstances, the board grants about 12,000 paroles a year and reviews twice that number of cases. But over the last 18 months, board members have gotten hundreds of additional cases from the governor's new Executive Clemency Advisory Council, which recommends medical and other commutations that require public hearings. The Parole Board is also personally reviewing hundreds of parolable lifers, after a federal judge ruled that the Department of Corrections had violated their constitutional rights.
Parole Board members serve rotating four-year terms and earn $89,000 a year. To make their decisions more impartial and accurate, they are learning how to use new validated assessment tools that predict risk based on a variety of information, including crime history, release plan, institutional record and age. But the Parole Board must have enough members to ensure that every eligible inmate gets a thorough, and safe, review.
Michigan cannot afford a prison system that is much larger than necessary to protect its citizens.
http://www.freep.com/article/20090204/OPINION01/902040356
Posted by lois at February 5, 2009 09:00 AM