The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

"We think that the legislature's budget for the corrections department represents an overly optimistic estimate of savings with no credible basis in fact," said Jeffrey Beckham, a spokesman for Rell's budget office. "It is just one example of many where the legislature has deliberately underestimated basic expenses of government so that they could shift money to areas where they just wanted to spend more. Frankly, this has been a recurring problem, which is why we have seen deficiencies in the Department of Correction budget over the last several years."

But Derek Slap, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams, said that Rell had been pushing for cuts for months and publicly complained that the Democratic-controlled legislature had not reduced spending enough.

"The governor said there were no real cuts," Slap said. "Now that there are cuts, they say, 'How do we do it?' Families across the state are doing this belt-tightening. The Rell administration and her bureaucracy is going to have to do the same. People want substantial cuts in spending."

With an annual budget of more than $700 million, the Department of Correction will need to cut $63.4 million from a two-year total of more than $1.4 billion. That represents less than 5 percent of the total department budget over two years.

In addition, Slap noted that Rell herself wanted to cut the prisons' budget by $56 million — a total not far from the Democrats' figure.

Larry Dorman, a spokesman for the union representing correction officers, said that closing any prisons would be a mistake. There are currently no provisions in the budget to shutter any facilities.

"We don't know where any of these alleged savings would come from or how they will be achieved," Dorman said. "If these cuts come at the expense of … safety inside or out [of prisons], then nothing good will be accomplished. If you close prisons, they will be opened up later. Crime doesn't stop."

The prison guards' union was concerned about the budget cuts even before the state's "super-max" prison was locked down over the weekend after three attacks Friday on guards by four inmates. One of the guards was beaten unconscious at the Northern Correctional Institution, which houses some of the state's toughest inmates and includes prisoners on death row. Top prison officials will meet today to determine whether the lockdown will be extended.

State Rep. Douglas McCrory, who serves as a subcommittee co-chairman overseeing prisons, said that lawmakers purposely avoided tying the hands of the correction commissioner during budget talks earlier this year. Instead, they wanted department officials to make the decisions about where to cut.

The state's prison population has been dropping since a peak that came after the triple killings in Cheshire in July 2007, which prompted a freeze in the state's parole system. The all-time high population in the prisons was 19,894 inmates on Feb. 1, 2008, according to the correction department. Today, that number has dropped by about 1,000.

With the cost of incarcerating the average inmate at about $40,000 per year, the state can save money this year by moving nonviolent criminals to halfway houses and group homes, McCrory said.

"Our prison population has declined over the last year and a half," McCrory said.

Along with the University of Connecticut Health Center, the correction department is one of the large state agencies that has failed to meet its budget projections in recent years. As such, the legislature often passes a "deficiency" bill, which means that the deficit is covered by savings in other agencies during the robust years or simply adds to the overall state deficit in the lean years.

Brian Garnett, a spokesman for the correction department, offered no specific examples of cuts in a large agency that oversees 18,800 inmates in 18 facilities.

"We continue to review that document," Garnett said of the two-year, $37.6 billion state budget. "We continue to take a look at those numbers and how we will implement them."

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