Louisiana is a prime example. With the highest rate of incarceration in the country, the state's corrections budget took on weight as its prison population grew during the 1990s from 20,000 to 35,000. Many of the new inmates were low-level drug offenders, put behind bars by a wave of tough-on-crime laws passed in the height of the early 1990s crack cocaine epidemic.
Now that the state's budget is tight, Louisiana wants to tame prison costs. The most immediate method is to set inmates free. The state this winter set up "risk review" boards. The boards evaluate whether certain nonviolent inmates are safe enough to recommend for pardon or parole. As many as 800 inmates--who currently cost $23 each per day-- are expected to pass muster and be released this year.
Louisiana lawmakers also took steps to stanch the flow of new inmates. They cut mandatory sentences for some drug-related offenses in half and eliminated mandatory minimums for other crimes. They also amended the state's "three strikes" law so that only those convicted of three violent crimes are locked away for life. "The legislature was asking a legitimate question," says corrections chief Richard Stalder. "Are there more cost-effective ways to deal with these problems?"
It isn't only Louisiana. The crime rate is down from its soaring levels of the early '90s, giving politicians wiggle room on crime policy. Lawmakers can now ease sentences without fear of being labeled "soft on crime." In Mississippi, lawmakers scaled back the state's "truth-in-sentencing" law, giving first-time nonviolent offenders a shot at parole once again. Connecticut changed its mandatory minimum sentencing law to give judges discretion to issue shorter sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, while North Dakota repealed mandatory minimums altogether for first-time drug users.
Meanwhile, the 1990s boom in prison construction is crashing like dot-com stock. Illinois, Ohio and Michigan are all closing prisons, while Missouri is putting off opening a new 2,000-bed prison because it can't afford to run it.
Troubled finances are a motivation to act, but there is also evidence of a philosophical shift. The criminal justice pendulum may be swinging away from incarceration and toward rehabilitation. In California, which built 12 new prisons in the 1990s, nonviolent drug offenders are now getting treatment, rather than being locked up. The change, a result of a ballot initiative, is expected to save as much as $150 million a year and avoid some $500 million in costs for new prisons.
Indeed, saving money is not even a goal of one proposal working its way through the Washington legislature. Lawmakers are likely to pass a measure that will shorten the sentences of low-level drug offenders but pump the savings into drug treatment. Three-quarters of the money would go to counties to run increasingly popular "drug courts." The rest would fund rehab programs in state prisons. "I see us moving away from a drug policy that just focuses on law enforcement," says King County prosecutor Norm Maleng. "We can keep the tough laws but also have education and treatment."
