Bill would require those convicted of serious crimes to serve sentences in state prison to relieve overcrowding in county jails.
By Amy Worden
Inquirer Staff
VERMONTVILLE, N.Y. — Over the last quarter-century, residents of this remote Adirondack Mountains community, who at first reluctantly accepted a state prison in their midst, came to depend on it.
It provided jobs and, with the inmate population, brawn for needed services.
Then in January, residents were stunned to learn that Gov. Eliot Spitzer — as part of a cost-saving strategy — was planning to close the minimum-security facility, Camp Gabriels, and three others next year.
A new approach to treating nonviolent offenders — along with declining crime rates — had driven the inmate population down by nearly 50 percent in minimum-security facilities, and it was no longer feasible to operate half-empty prisons, officials said.
Gov. Rendell could only wish that Pennsylvania had that problem.
A month after Spitzer’s announcement, Rendell presented lawmakers with a starkly different picture. With the state’s prison population skyrocketing, he said in his annual budget address, a spending increase was necessary, in large part because of rising prison costs.
His warning came at a time when several states, led by New York, are beginning to move away from mandatory sentencing for nonviolent drug and property crimes and toward alternative sentencing and expanded drug and mental-health treatment along with the implementation of early release for good behavior.
In Pennsylvania, officials have explored the same alternatives as costs take up more of the state budget and prison populations explode, driven in large part by rising numbers of repeat offenders.
Since 1990, inmates in the state’s 26 prisons have doubled from 22,000 to more than 44,000. In the same period, costs spiraled from $407 million in 1990 to $1.4 billion in 2006-07.
Facing an 11,000-bed shortfall by 2011, the Department of Corrections said it would have to build more prisons.
“What I told the legislators is that if we don’t do anything, we will have to build three new prisons by 2012,” Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said.
The picture in Pennsylvania mirrors that in many other states. A recent study by the Pew Center on the States found that more than 1 in 100 American adults is now behind bars. And last year, the 50 states spent a total of $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987.
Now Pennsylvania is working to implement elements of what some officials call “the New York model.”
“There are 10 to 15 years’ worth of studies showing just locking up drug offenders or those who commit property crimes doesn’t work,” Beard said. “Confinement alone, without addressing problems, is not an effective way of dealing with people.”
A package of four bills modeled in part on the New York laws and supported by Rendell cleared the state House this month and heads to the Senate, where it has leadership support.
“This is a huge step forward for reinventing our criminal-justice system,” said House Speaker Dennis O’Brien (R., Phila.), sponsor of one of the bills, who has fought for prison reform for five years.
O’Brien’s bill would require those convicted of serious crimes to serve sentences in state prison to relieve overcrowding in county jails and would add incentives for nonviolent offenders, including drug and alcohol treatment and literacy and job training, to curb recidivism.
Other bills would increase supervision for probation and parole and give more flexibility to relocate seriously ill inmates to medical-care facilities.
As testament to its widespread support, the prison-reform package has the backing of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association and the Pennsylvania Prison Society, which are often on opposing sides of criminal-justice issues.
Experts say the New York prisoner decline stems from a combination of factors, among them lower crime rates, but also a philosophical shift taking place within the corrections system and the legislature.
Two decades ago, high-profile crimes by parolees as well as the crack epidemic helped usher in zero-tolerance policies on drug crimes in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
But the result was an explosion in prison growth and no real evidence that long-term incarceration was working.
“Getting tough on criminals is getting tough on taxpayers, and we are not seeing the benefits in public safety,” said Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project.
The new approaches, studies show, help reduce the chance of an offender’s committing another crime.
“They may get out sooner than they used to, but it’s not ‘get out of jail free,’ ” said Brian Fischer, commissioner of New York’s Department of Corrections. “They are released earlier but under strict supervision.”
Fischer went on to say he thinks that the carrot-and-stick approach works and that “nonviolent offenders profit from a short term in prison.”
There is no evidence yet of a lower number of repeat offenders, but neither has there been an increase, Fischer said.
The people in the communities around Camp Gabriels, situated in a picturesque Victorian-era sanitarium, were gearing up for a protest in March when they got an unexpected reprieve with Spitzer’s resignation.
The day before a scheduled rally at the Capitol, they learned that the new governor, David A. Paterson, had restored the funding for Camp Gabriels and the other prisons through at least March 2009.
“One thousand people showed up anyway,” said Richard Gonyea, a retired corrections officer whose wife, Joy, is a nurse at Camp Gabriels. “It was supposed to be a protest rally. It ended up being more of a pep rally.”
The prison provides a $40 million annual economic boost in an area with an aging population and few major businesses. Its inmates build playgrounds, fight fires and clear trails.
The State of New York may have shelved plans to close prisons for now, but the agency could reconsider its options after the March 2009 budget, Fischer said.
“Our population has decreased to a point of reassignment and realignment,” Fischer said. “We need to look at how to manage the system.”
Even if the bills in Pennsylvania get signed into law and all of the policies are implemented, the state is likely not looking at closing any prisons but may have to build only two rather than three new ones, Beard said.
“It’s important that we move ahead with a couple of prisons,” Beard said. “Even if we zero-out growth, we are still over capacity, and we need to take care of the overcrowding.”
Copyright 2008 The Philadelphia Inquirer