Virginia’s prison system is one of the biggest budget-busters in state government. Expenditures have doubled over the past eight years to about $1.25 billion. I’m all in favor of putting the crooks in jail — and keeping them there. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do a better job of running the system.
One very simple reform could save millions of dollars. As pointed out by Pat Nolan in the current edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion newsletter (published by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy):
For instance, almost 10 percent of new admissions to Virginia’s prisons haven’t committed a new crime. They have merely broken the rules of their supervision. Many of these offenders are just knuckleheads who don’t follow the rules. They don’t turn in paperwork, or miss an appointment with their parole officer or test dirty for drugs. Of course we want them to follow the rules, but at $28,000 per prison bed per year, it is very costly – and counterproductive – to send these ‘technical violators’ back to prison.
It is far more effective, and costs much less, to administer quick, certain and short consequences for breaking the rules. In Hawaii, Project Hope enforces the rules of probation with immediate consequences. If offenders have a dirty urinalysis they are immediately jailed – but not for years, just 24 or 48 hours. The result: reduced ‘dirty’ drug tests by 91 percent and a drop in both revocations and new arrests by two-thirds. This program accomplishes what we want – teaching offenders to follow the rules and keeping addicts in drug treatment – without filling the prisons.
