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Background

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices held the first in a series of webcasts on strategies aimed at maintaining public safety while reducing corrections expenditures. This webcast was made possible through a partnership with the Pew Charitable Trust Public Safety Performance Project.

The current economic crisis is forcing governors to take dramatic steps to balance state budgets in nearly all categories by laying off employees, cutting services, reducing overtime, and eliminating capital expenditures. However, the storm waters of the budget crisis will not crest until 2009. Tax revenues are forecasted to significantly drop and credit and bond markets will continue to tighten. Given such dire forecasts, governors need to be prepared to make even deeper cuts to core services including healthcare, education, transportation, and corrections. While making across-the-board budget cuts presents many difficult decisions, the challenges associated with making deep cuts to corrections is particularly daunting considering the potential for disastrous public safety outcomes.

Protecting public safety is a fundamental obligation of government. But how can states continue to provide a high degree of public safety during difficult economic times? While crime rates have continued to decline over the last decade, there has also been significant growth in prison populations and corrections budgets. Currently, states house approximately 1.6 million prisoners at an annual cost of well over $45 billion. That figure excludes other public safety activities like law enforcement, courts, crime labs, technology, and homeland security and still represents the fourth largest general fund budget item for states.

The December webcast explored the options states have and challenges they face in making budget cuts. The panel addressed questions such as:

• How can we reduce prison populations and close institutions without releasing dangerous criminals? 
• How can we expand less expensive options such as community corrections while ensuring proper supervision?
• How can we continue to provide programs and services to prisoners that qualify them for release and help prevent them from being reincarcerated for new crimes?
• What immediate cost-cutting actions can states take?

This webcast provided an overview of how state corrections leaders are responding to this important and complex issue and will feature a panel of experts including:

• Scott Pattison, Executive Director, National Association of State Budget Officers
  Presentation

• A.T. Wall, Director, Rhode Island Department of Corrections and Treasurer of the Association of State Correctional Administrators

• Daniel F. Wilhelm, Vice President & Chief Program Officer, Vera Institute of Justice

• Richard Jerome, Project Manager, Public Safety Performance Project, Pew Center on the States

Resources:

• Cutting Costs: How States are Addressing Corrections Budget Shortfalls
  This document provides a categorical listing of corrections savings measures as reported by the states to the Association of State Correctional Administrators in November 2008.

• Dollars and Sentences: Legislators’ Views on Prisons, Punishment, and the Budget Crisis
  This document from the Vera Institute of Justice and the National Conference of State Legislators describes budget cuts implemented to save corrections costs in the 2003 legislative session.
  
  
• Changing Fortunes or Changing Attitudes? Sentencing and Corrections Reforms in 2003
  This survey from the Vera Institute of Justice describes sentencing and corrections reforms implemented to address the 2003 budget crisis and describes whether those policy changes indicated shifting attitudes towards various types of offenders.
  
  
• Policy Framework to Strengthen Community Corrections
  The Pew Public Safety Performance Project's menu of 5 policy options is a shortened version of their strengthening community corrections project, which includes timeframes, suggested language for legislation, executive order or court rules, research rationale and state examples.
  
  
• Probation and Parole in the Year 2020
  This document, from the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, chronicles Georgia’s implementation of Performance Accountability Programming for parole officers, which has resulted in a cost savings of $22 million in 3 years.
  
  
• State Budget Update November 2008
  This report from the National Conference of State Legislatures provides information on all 50 states and Puerto Rico. It is based on data collected from legislative fiscal directors in November 2008. It includes information on budget gaps in FY 2009, actions states are taking or considering to close the gaps, revenue performance, the outlook for revenue performance, and projections of FY 2010 budget gaps.

Helpful Links:

• The National Governors Association Improving Sentencing and Corrections Policy Project
  This Web site describes the NGA Center’s work with the Pew Charitable Trusts to help states identify and adopt strategies to advance fiscally sound, data-driven policies in sentencing and corrections that protect public safety, hold offenders accountable, and control corrections costs.
  
  
• The Pew Public Safety Performance Project
  The Public Safety Performance Project helps states advance fiscally sound, data-driven sentencing and corrections policies and practices that protect public safety, hold offenders accountable, and control costs.

Panelist Bios:

• Scott Pattison
  Scott D. Pattison serves as the Executive Director of the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) in Washington, DC. Founded in 1945, NASBO serves as the professional organization for state budget officers of all 50 states and U.S. territories. The organization collects fiscal data and publishes numerous reports on state fiscal conditions. The association also provides training and information on financial management and budgeting.
  
  Pattison served for four years as Virginia's State Budget Officer. Prior to serving as a State Budget Officer, he headed the Regulatory and Economic Analysis section of the Virginia Department of Planning and Budget. He also served on the Virginia Debt Capacity Advisory Board, College Building Authority and Performance Management Advisory Committee. For several years, Pattison worked in a variety of capacities, including as an Attorney-Advisor, at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. He has a bachelor's degree from George Washington University and received his law degree from the University of Virginia.

• A.T. Wall
  Ashbel T. ("A.T.") Wall, II was appointed director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections in March 2000. As director, Wall oversees a comprehensive correctional agency encompassing every aspect of Rhode Island’s adult correctional system: jails, prisons, probation, parole, transitional housing and home confinement. He is responsible for setting policy direction and supervising all operations for a department that manages about 3,500 pretrial and sentenced inmates in eight institutions and 27,000 offenders on probation, parole and community confinement. Wall earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University. While earning his law degree he worked as a probation officer for the State of Connecticut. Prior to starting his service in Rhode Island, he worked for the District Attorney’s Office for New York County and the Vera Institute of Justice, where he directed the Manhattan Community Service Sentencing Project.

• Daniel Wilhelm
  Daniel Wilhelm supervises all of Vera's centers and programs. He also oversees the Institute's communications and development efforts. Formerly as director of technical assistance, Dan guided how Vera worked with local, state, and national government officials and oversaw the Institute's federal relations. From 2002 to early 2006, Dan directed Vera's State Sentencing and Corrections Program; he joined the Institute in 2001 as that program's associate director. Previously Dan practiced as a litigator in the New York office of Sidley & Austin and served as law clerk to U.S. District Judge Frederic Block in Brooklyn, NY. Dan has testified before commissions and legislative committees in some 20 states on criminal justice matters. He is co-author of the Vera publication Is the Budget Crisis Changing the Way We Look at Sentencing and Incarceration? and has written on justice issues for the Federal Sentencing Reporter, Corrections Today, the American Bar Association, and the American Journal of International Law. Dan is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law, Harvard Divinity School, and Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

• Richard Jerome
  Richard Jerome is Project Manager of the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States. This project helps states advance fiscally sound, data-driven sentencing and corrections policies that protect public safety, hold offenders accountable and control corrections costs. Prior to joining Pew, Richard was a civil rights lawyer and expert in police accountability. He served for six years as Deputy Monitor and court appointed Special Master for two police reform settlements in Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1997 to 2001, he was Deputy Associate Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice, overseeing the work of the Civil Rights Division and the Community Relations Service, as well as coordinating the Justice Department’s efforts to promote police integrity. He was a senior trial lawyer in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division and also worked on Capitol Hill and in private practice. He graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School.