Dumb on crime: Kansas cuts diversion programs keeping prison pop down

Kansas is headed down exactly down the path I fear Texas may go if state officials don't seriously consider closing unneeded prison units in the coming legislative session: The Jayhawk State is dismantling treatment and diversion programs that received national acclaim, risking an unintended rise in incarceration costs if more offenders on probation and parole are revoked. According to the Kansas City Star ("Kansas' model parole program collapses with state budget cuts," April 3):

Treatment and support services for ... inmates re-entering society cost $12.6 million two years ago. That was when mental health care, job training and community residential programs for people on parole helped make Kansas a national model for success.

Now the model has been dismantled. For the fiscal year beginning July, the corrections department will get about $5.3 million to fund those programs under Gov. Mark Parkinson’s budget recommendations.

To the taxpayer and government officials desperately trying to balance the state’s books, the short-term savings are hard to resist.

But experts know that a convict ill-prepared for “re-entry” — especially in this job market — may mean only rising crime in the coming years.

Should [an offender] violate his parole and be taken off the street, it will cost about $25,000 each year to incarcerate him.

Like in Texas, the GOP-controlled legislature in Kansas had embarked on cost-saving reforms aimed at reducing long-term incarceration growth, investing a much smaller amount in treatment services and strengthened community supervision to avoid even greater prison construction costs. The current budget crisis raises the question: Will those programs be sacrificed on the altar of budget cuts, or will brick-and-mortar prisons be closed instead. Kansas said "no," to prison closures and their legislature voted to slash their diversion programming instead:

“Just like that — the national model we created no longer exists,” said state Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican who leads the House Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice. “We were written up in The Wall Street Journal. I was invited to the White House,” when then-President George W. Bush signed legislation directing $54 million in federal grants to help duplicate Kansas’ success around the country.

“The fact that our programs had gotten it right — and we had the data to prove it — didn’t keep us from destroying that model,” she said.

If Texas' leaders aren't planning now for alternative cuts to the corrections budget, that could easily be a Texan talking a year from now. Thankfully, we're in a much more flexible position than Kansas. They have mandatory sentencing laws that keep them from effectively managing the prison population, whereas nearly 2/3 of Texas prisoners (more than 88,000 inmates) are currently eligible for parole. Texas actually is in a position to cut its prison population dramatically, if it ever decided to do so.

Meanwhile, in response to their budget crunch, Georgia isn't considering reducing inmate numbers, but a prominent native son, Newt Gingrich, has been pushing for them to do so:

Newt Gingrich, the former Georgia Republican congressman who served as Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, wrote recently in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “Georgia simply can’t afford for the corrections system to maintain the status quo.”

Gingrich argued that recidivism rates are unacceptably high and that churches and non-profits need to offer more resources and support to help offenders who are released from prison build productive lives in the community.

“Celebrating taking criminals off the street with little thought to their imminent return to society is foolhardy,” Gingrich wrote in the article, which was co-authored by Mark Earley, a former attorney general of Virginia.

Supervising an offender on parole costs Georgia taxpayers an average of $4.43 a day, compared with $46 a day to house someone in prison.

For many, many reasons, I'm thankful Texas has biennial instead of annual legislative sessions: One of the big ones is that our budgeting decisions aren't quite as reactive and knee-jerk as they might be if a new budget were crafted every year. Texas has time right now to identify ways to our correction costs safely instead of hacking away willy nilly at successful diversion programs.

Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden recently told the Houston Chronicle he doesn't favor exempting TDCJ from budget cuts, which means the state faces the same stark choice as Kansas in its corrections policy: Slash diversion programming (which is what TDCJ proposed), or increase funding for diversion, reducing the incarceration rate and slashing (much greater) prison spending. Just about one year from now the rubber will meet the road on those decisions. I hope we don't screw it up, like in Kansas.

See related Grits posts

• Tarheel prison units closed with budget cuts, Michigan may expand good time
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• The shortest distance to cutting 5% at TDCJ: Reduce drug penalties
  
• An 'unrepentant, hard-right conservative' was 'forced to agree' with prison diversion 'based on the facts'
  
• Correa: Preserve diversion funding, cut prisons to reduce TDCJ's budget
  
• Texas' criminal justice challenge in 2010: Find solutions to coming budget crunch
  
• Might 2011 budget crunch bring TX prison closures?
• As 2011 budget crisis looms, should most expensive prison units be closed?
• Data on TDCJ unit age and cost
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• States slashing spending costs, closing units
• Some states actually shutting down prison units
• Emptying prisons makes Wired magazine's 'Smart List'
• California's partisan prison meltdown: Why Texas didn't go there