$900M system may take $40M-$185M hit
Michelle Escalante, 32, (left) cooks chicken for fajitas at the Arizona State Prison-Perryville Desert Rose Cafe last year. The inmates at the cafe learn cooking skills from a Rio Salado College instructor. The state Department of Corrections prepared a list of budget cut options for state leaders that includes $2 million in inmate programs such as this one.
Fewer prisoners, fewer corrections officers, fewer programs.
Arizona Department of Corrections administrators know cuts are coming. The reductions could range from $40 million to more than $185 million, depending on how much legislators decide to cut.
With the figures in mind, prison officials are pushing to protect as many corrections officer positions as possible and find savings in areas that would not impact staffing.
If the state orders the department to cut 20 percent from its annual budget of more than $900 million, staffing won’t be an issue: Cuts that deep would require rewriting the state’s criminal code to allow the early release of some low-level offenders and closing a handful of prisons, officials said.
The state’s prison system houses more than 30,000 inmates in state-owned facilities and another 8,000 in private facilities. Officials anticipate Arizona’s prison population will continue to grow, reaching more than 38,000 by the end of 2011.
Filling the void of corrections officers has been an ongoing struggle for the state, which has seen the number of working officers level out at about 5,000 during the last few years.
“From my perspective, the Department of Corrections is a public safety agency charged with maintaining effective custody and control of just under 40,000 prisoners,” said corrections Director Charles Ryan. “We are able to do this through our inmate classification system, our physical plants and, most importantly, our correctional staff. We cannot do this without a well-trained staff.”
Looking for ways to save
After the Joint Legislative Budget Committee in January proposed eliminating more than 600 corrections officer positions, prison administrators came up with other cost-cutting measures to demonstrate 5 percent to 20 percent budget reductions. They include:
• Eliminating prisoner programs, including a special treatment for sex offenders and a work-based education program, which serves more than 2,000 inmates per day.
• Reducing or removing incentives for officers, a move that could include eliminating uniform allowances and retention bonuses.
• Charging inmates Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System rates for medical care for a savings of up to $28 million.
• Releasing 3,000 to 9,500 inmates from state custody and place them into some combination of county custody, house arrest or community supervision.
Fear of increased violence
Cutting positions should be at the bottom of legislators’ list, Ryan said.
“If that comes to pass, it’s likely that the assaults of inmates against inmates are going to increase in the lower- and the medium-custody units, and the assaults against our staff may increase as well,” he said.
Following the longest prison standoff in U.S. history, when two prisoners took Officer Lois Fraley hostage and held her in a tower for 15 days at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis in 2004, elected officials made a concerted effort to boost correction officers’ pay and improve retention in the hopes of increasing staffing levels and reducing the number of assaults.
More than five years later, inmate assaults on staff and each other have increased.
Recruitment: bad to worse
Efforts to increase staffing levels at the 10 state-owned prisons also fell short, a result of weak pay, Ryan said.
Even when the economy is humming, it’s hard to convince people to take relatively low-paying jobs that come with some safety risks in locations far from large population centers.
Now that the economy is sputtering, the state could not afford to fill those positions even if there was demand.
Corrections officials estimate that one in 17 staff members will get assaulted on the job this fiscal year, up from the one in 41 staff members assaulted five years ago, according to documents prison officials shared with legislators.
Early release is an option
The early release of thousands of prisoners is at the bottom of the list, but is a possibility.
The proposal is not unique to Arizona: Corrections officials in other states also are considering early release to cut spending.
In Arizona, legislators would have to rewrite criminal laws, which could result in the release of thousands of prisoners.
There is some support in the Legislature to at least consider the idea, said Cecil Ash, a former public defender and first-term representative from Mesa.
Ash saw firsthand the impact sentencing laws can have on the prison population when one of his clients pleaded to an eight-year sentence for stealing a bicycle, the client’s third strike.
“He was just a fellow who was just stupid and lazy,” Ash said. “He deserves a penalty, but I’m not one to spend $40,000 a year on that kind of guy.”
Ash stressed that nobody wants to release prisoners who are violent or who pose a threat to the public.
“But there are a lot of people in prison, I’m afraid, that shouldn’t be there,” Ash said. “It’s not worth the cost to the state because they’re not that severe a threat to the public.”
State prison inmates work on a Habitat for Humanity house in the Tucson area, near Westover Avenue and Bilby Road, in 2004. The 8-year-old program would likely survive budget cuts, a state DOC official said.
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DOC BUDGET OPTIONS
The Arizona Department of Corrections was asked to provide a range of options if the state orders cuts of 5 percent to 20 percent. Here are some examples of ways to save:
• Option: eliminate 612 corrections officer positions
• Savings: $25 million
• Risk: Increased assaults on staff and among inmates
• Option: reduce corrections officer training, incentives, uniform allowances, travel stipends and salary increases
• Savings: $17 million
• Risk: more difficult to recruit and retain already hard-to-staff positions that are vital to prison operations
• Option: reduce funding for inmate programs
• Savings: $2 million
• Risk: The programs help reduce recidivism and target specific populations such as sex offenders.
• Option: rewrite criminal code to allow early release
• Savings: as much as $132 million
• Risk: nonviolent, first-time offenders would be released from state custody into county jails, house arrest or parole. That would leave serious, violent and repeat offenders in more overcrowded facilities with fewer corrections officers. The changes would eliminate nearly 1,200 positions.
Source: Department of Corrections
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How the country copes with prison costs
• In Washington state, legislators are debating whether to close one or more prison facilities, at least temporarily, which could lead to the early release of more than 1,500 prisoners.
• In South Carolina, prison officials are threatening to close five prisons and release 3,400 inmates if a $40 million deficit cannot be corrected.
• In Florida, legislators are considering shipping 2,000 prisoners out of state or releasing some offenders early to meet a proposed $50 million budget reduction.
• In Ohio, the Belmont County sheriff said his budget would force him to release nearly 50 unsentenced inmates and lay off 68 of the county’s 82 deputies.
• In Maine, county commissioners are considering shuttering a 72-hour detention facility and using alternative sentencing or home release instead.
Source: Republic research
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Arizona Prison Complex-Tucson
The Tucson prison as of April 6 had 875 corrections officers and 906 authorized positions for a vacancy rate of 3.42 percent.
Statewide, there were 5,490 corrections officers and 5,694 positions for a vacancy rate of 3.58 percent
As of March 31, there were 3,922 prisoners in the Tucson unit and 35,693 statewide.
Source: Arizona Department of Corrections