With the new Legislature getting ready to take office in January, the state’s departments all await the impending budget cuts. Perhaps the most nervous are the heavily slashed health and education departments that are still nursing their wounds from earlier this year. But, if the recent buzz rings true, our legislators may be finding the political will to consider cuts to the state’s prison system, which has been relatively overlooked in the budget slashes of recent years.
As each department goes to the cutting block this fiscal year, no one will see the prison system sneak out the back door. Tuesday, two Arizona legislators said criminal sentencing may be affected by state budget shortfalls, which are at least $100 million less than what’s allotted to the Department of Corrections every year.
Arizona state prison costs are 10 times higher than they were 30 years ago, according to The Associated Press. Additionally, the rate hospitals are reimbursed for care given to prisoners is falling. The rate is based on the state’s Medicare rate, which was 75 percent higher last year, according to The Arizona Republic.
Possible changes to shore up the budget could include releasing prisoners earlier and implementing changes in parole violations or referring criminals to counseling instead of incarcerating them.
Lest we forget the prison breaks this July, the call for change is beyond budget cuts.
Although many of the prisons in Arizona are privately owned, they are contracted through the state government. In the Kingman prison alone, there are 3,200 beds, and as of August the state sought to add another 5,000. But overpopulating a prison with an already faulty security system is a bad pair. Not to mention, the warden of the prison admitted in August that 80 percent of her staff was either new to the job or had been recently promoted. If the state is going to be sending its felons to a place like this, then there’s no point in wasting the resources to lock them up.
But our problems don’t stop there. A recent story on National Public Radio drew a connection between SB 1070 and deals with private prison contractors. The economic supplements that Arizona may be able to reap from the detention of illegal immigrants, or those accused of being illegal immigrants, include a special facility for women and children. According to NPR, this could mean hundreds of millions of dollars for private prisons.
This isn’t just Arizona’s problem either. The Associated Press reported Nov. 4 that California is considering sending about 5,000 of its prisoners out of state in order to reduce crowding at its prisons. Since 2006, California has sent about 10,000 inmates to private prisons outside its borders at a price tag of around $300 million.
Our best bet for next year is that our politicians will find a way to shore up the prison budget, even though it may not be a popular issue. Arizona needs to get its act together, before we go around locking up or letting go of people who broke our progressively more radical laws. And we need to find the most effective and morally sound ways to spend our money.
But one thing’s for sure, if we dare cut education again, we’re going to need those prisons in a few more years. It’s a vicious circle, cultivating criminals.
