Justice Reinvestment

June 16, 2009

Article by Shannon Wright

Oregon, like almost every other state in the country, continues to embrace the policies that have exploded and continue to grow our prison population. A recent report by PEW Charitable Trusts on corrections in America found that Oregon spends the greatest percentage of its general fund budget on corrections – more than any other state in the country. We gained further notoriety in the PEW report as one of only four states that spends more on corrections than on higher education.  In the current economic climate, Oregonians must look closely at the money we spend on corrections and how we might reduce costs while maintaining, if not improving, public safety.

While topping the list of states that spends the most on corrections, Oregon is not alone in needing to assess the problems of ever-increasing corrections costs. A new model for public safety policy reform called “Justice Reinvestment” is building momentum across the country. It’s a concept that flows from the idea that states can spend less on prisons and more on the programs, services, and facilities that make neighborhoods and people healthy and safe. The justice reinvestment strategy is designed to find the waste in correctional spending, make smart policy changes that save money in those areas and then re-invest the savings to strengthen critical community infrastructure like education, job training, drug and alcohol treatment, and mental health care.

An Open Society Institute policy paper on justice reinvestment states: “The goal of justice reinvestment is to redirect some portion of the $54 billion America now spends on prisons to rebuilding the human resources and physical infrastructure – the schools, healthcare facilities, parks and public spaces – of neighborhoods devastated by high levels of incarceration.”

A handful of states have begun to implement justice reinvestment practices, starting with Connecticut. By 2000, Connecticut had spent $1 billion on prison construction over the previous decade, but still did not have enough beds for all of the people being sent to prison. For over a year, editorials in Connecticut called for a reduction in prison spending. The legislature responded and in 2004 passed the Act Concerning Prison Overcrowding, which outlined a plan to reduce parole revocations and provided increased services for people coming out of prison. Implementation of the act brought promising results. Connecticut went from being a state with one of the fastest growing prison populations to one that was shrinking the fastest. 

Interestingly, Connecticut took inspiration from a program in Deschutes County, Oregon for youth in trouble. The program was created by the late Dennis Maloney, a correctional officer, who after being appointed to a state prison forecasting committee, realized that the state was headed in the wrong direction by spending too much on corrections and not enough on education. He saw that because the state paid to house people in state prison, counties had a financial incentive to send people to prison rather than keeping them close to home. Maloney helped developed a system for community corrections funding for the county that encouraged the county to invest in an individual’s success rather than shipping that person off to a state prison.

In 1997, he helped to pass legislation that allowed Deschutes County to get the money that would have been spent to send a person to prison and use it as the county saw fit to get the best outcome – in this case, for youth. Because community programs are far less expensive than secure care, if the county could help the youth succeed, there were be funds left over in the county for other services. If the youth failed, the county would have to pay the cost of state incarceration. The program was successful. Maloney had youth giving back to their communities through service work instead of spending time in prisons. Deschutes County experienced a dramatic reduction in the number of youth sent to state facilities and saved money.

Building on the Connecticut experience and with support from the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center, other states have begun to study prison spending, reduce prison build up, and support the communities most impacted by crime. The Justice Center defines justice reinvestment as a data driven strategy for policymakers to: reduce spending on corrections; increase public safety; and improve conditions in the neighborhoods where most people are returning from prison. States working with the Justice Center participate in a four step process:   

  1. Analyze the prison population and the spending in the communities where the majority of former prisoners return.
  2. Provide policy makers with options to generate savings and increase public safety.
  3. Quantify the savings and reinvest in targeted highly impacted communities.
  4. Evaluate the impact.

Texas is another state where the budget was being decimated by correctional costs. Between 1985 and 2005 the prison population had swelled by over 100,000 and over $2 billion had been spent on prison construction. Under the leadership of State Senator John Whitmire the state studied its incarceration polices. Among the identified problems were a lack of adequate addiction treatment; a large number of people in prison for probation violations; and a lack of rehabilitative programs in prison and diversion programs in the community. In 2007, the Texas legislature adopted a number of criminal justice system changes including shortening the maximum length of time a person can be on probation for certain crimes. By limiting probation terms and investing in treatment in prison and the community, it is estimated Texas will save $210 million in the first two years of implementation and could save that much again if there is no new prison construction during that time.

Justice reinvestment has to be applied to each state in ways that are customized to the specific regional needs. For that reason, states that are working within a justice reinvestment framework have varied approaches; yet one common finding among participating states seems to be that there is not enough drug treatment in prison or in the community, and that probationary sentences are too long and often ineffective at reducing recidivism.

Although Oregon is in dire need of a concerted justice reinvestment strategy, there is not yet enough political buy-in for the state to being driving the process. That said, Partnership for Safety and Justice is using a justice reinvestment framework when communicating our agenda. With a severe budget deficit and devastating cuts proposed to community-based treatment, mental health and victim’s services, we believe now is the time to get smarter about our public safety spending. Much of our communications work is currently focused on the cost benefit analysis of engaging in safe and sensible sentencing reform in order to help protect the community-based treatment programs that are so necessary for maintaining public safety.

Shannon Wight is the Associate Director for Partnership for Safety and Justice.

Material referenced in this article:


This article originally appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Justice Matters.

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