Amy Renee Leiker
The Wichita Eagle
Projections that put Kansas’ adult prisons nearly 1,700 inmates over capacity by the middle of the next decade have lawmakers and state corrections officials looking for ways to slow growth and ease overcrowding.
The Kansas Sentencing Commission, which monitors prison population, has said it expects the state will need an additional 1,325 prison beds for men over the next 10 years. About half of those — 609 — are needed by mid-2018 to meet projected demands.
Legislators already have taken a handful of measures to help address shrinking bed space, like giving inmates extra time off their sentences if they complete certain rehabilitation programs. But it has not been enough to curb the growth.
“We’re at about 102 percent of capacity now, and we’re doing nothing but going up,” said Rep. John Rubin, R-Shawnee, who chairs the House standing and interim joint committees on corrections and juvenile justice.
On Friday the state had 8,898 men incarcerated — 99 inmates above capacity, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections’ latest population report. The number of women was 811, slightly less than the 837 beds available.
“We’ve got to find more alternatives,” Rubin said.
Below are some of the options for curbing overcrowding that state legislators are expected to weigh when their session starts in January.
County jails, private prisons
Right now, the KDOC helps ease overpopulation by housing some of its inmates in county jails.
The state, KDOC spokesman Adam Pfannenstiel said, currently contracts with seven detention facilities — in Butler, Cherokee, Cloud, Jackson, Labette, Neosho and Wilson counties — and could seek more to address projected population growth.
The state could also ask for more space at the jails with which it now contracts, he said.
Outgoing Secretary of Corrections Ray Roberts, in a presentation to a joint legislative committee on corrections on juvenile justice last week, said that under current contracts KDOC can safely house 300 to 350 inmates in county jails. But he called it a temporary solution.
As of Friday, 79 inmates were being held in county facilities.
“They’re not there for an extended period of time or spending their entire sentence” in county jails, Pfannenstiel said, adding that the per-inmate daily cost to do so is about $40.
“They may be up there for up to 90 days,” he said, “and then would be transferred back to a correctional facility.”
Using private out-of-state prisons to ease overpopulation in Kansas also has been discussed. But at an average per-inmate cost of $55 a day, that option would mean sending potentially millions of dollars outside the state, Pfannenstiel said. There are no private prisons in Kansas.
Currently, KDOC has no existing contracts with private out-of-state prisons. Pfannenstiel said there has been no talk about how many beds could be saved with this option.
Program credits
Giving certain inmates who complete rehabilitation programs more time off their prison sentence is again one of the options under consideration for reducing the demand on prison bed space.
Currently, inmates can be released 90 days early for finishing a variety of educational, vocational and behavior modification training.
Increasing that to 120 days would save about half the beds — 305 — needed to address the 609-bed shortage that’s projected for mid-2018, Pfannenstiel said.
Last year, nearly 75 percent of offenders eligible for program credits who were released earned time off their sentences, according to KDOC’s annual report. Legislators have upped credits from 60 to 90 days in the past to ease bed demand.
In addition to giving inmates a chance at early release, Rubin said, completing programs gives offenders a better chance at avoiding future prison stays, which also helps to slow prison population growth.
“If we can get more inmates involved in vocational training and education and related programs in prison, the better the chances are they’ll be rehabilitated … and there’ll be a better chance of them not recidivating,” he said. “And that’s important.”
Pfannenstiel said there’s currently no plan to alter early release earned through good behavior, which is known as good-time credit.
Expansion
The option that would perhaps have the quickest and longest impact on addressing the demand for prison beds is to add more to the existing correctional facilities.
During his presentation to the joint legislative committee last week, Roberts outlined a proposal to expand El Dorado Correctional Facility by 512 inmate beds. The prison sits on U.S. 54 just east of El Dorado.
The $27 million plan calls for building onto two cell houses on the prison’s current campus. It’s under consideration for expansion over other prisons because there’s room there to do it, Pfannenstiel said.
Should legislators choose to approve an expansion plan, Pfannenstiel said, half the beds could be ready for use by January 2018. The other half would be finished by July 2018, he said.
“All this is making sure we’re planning ahead,” Pfannenstiel said, noting that the daily per-inmate cost of an expansion is about the same as the cost of housing at a private prison. “We know the population is growing, so we’d rather have a plan to deal with it and find out how we want to approach this as opposed to being behind and later on trying to figure out what we’re going to do.”
Pfannenstiel added that the greatest need for more beds is for medium- and high-custody inmates.
Non-prison alternatives
Lawmakers also are expected to consider a host of non-prison alternatives to help slow the population climb during the upcoming legislative session.
Among proposals Rubin said will be under consideration is one that would give people with mental health issues alternatives to incarceration, like treatment, and expanding a program that gives low-level offenders non-prison options for treating drug and alcohol use.
Rubin also said he would push for wider application of what he called the Justice Reinvestment Act, a 2013 initiative that encourages courts to use sanctions other than prison time to punish probationers who have minor violations, like failing to report to their probation officer and using drugs or alcohol.
Properly treating juvenile offenders so they’re less likely to commit crimes in adulthood will also be a main focus, he said.
Last year, 35 percent of adult inmates had a mental illness, with nearly half of those classified as having a serious mental illness, according to KDOC.
“Much of what drives lower-level crimes … (like) burglaries and thefts is drug use or mental health issues, and quite often if you can get people the treatment that they need in the community, it’s better for the individual,” Rubin said.
“It will reduce their risk of recidivism, it will reduce their risk of reoffending, if we can get them back on meds” — or off of drugs or alcohol — “and in the community. And it will reduce bed space costs.”
Law changes
Many blame the tough-on-crime attitude that has swept the country over the past 20 years for the steady uptick in prison populations — leaving changing laws as another option for shrinking the need for inmate beds.
Rubin said the Kansas Sentencing Commission, in addition to discussing other prison population reduction options at a two-day meeting last month, looked at changing the severity levels of certain types of crimes so the sentences are less harsh.
One such tweak that he said passed the Kansas House of Representatives last year would reduce penalties for first- and second-time marijuana possession. It stalled in the Senate, but Rubin said such measures could go a long way toward easing overpopulation.
Drug crimes were the most serious offense listed for 18.1 percent of male inmates and 34.2 percent of female inmates in KDOC’s 2015 annual report.
“We’ve got too many crimes on the books, and with the severity levels of sentences, it’s going to go up,” Rubin said. “But if we can slow the rate of growth of bed space demand at least, we’ll be serving an important function.
“It is my hope that someday we will be able to halt the increase altogether and maybe reverse it and start moving our bed space demands back down again. But for now what we’ve got to focus on the immediate future.”
Rubin said the alternatives, if enacted, will slow growing demand for prison bed space. But they won’t stop it.
Since 2010, the overall adult prison population in Kansas has grown by 958 inmates. It’s expected to reach a total of 11,300 inmates by 2025.
“It’s clear we’re going to have to build some more prison space,” Rubin said. “And sooner probably rather than later.
“We’re at a crossroads because if our Kansas prisons become too overpopulated … we’ll wind up finding ourselves like California is now — under a federal court order to reduce prison overcrowding, which could require early release of felons, sometimes dangerous felons.
“We don’t want that. That is a risk to public safety that we don’t want.”
Copyright 2015 The Wichita Eagle