Legislative Watch

Correcting the Course of Corrections

Recently Passed Legislation

The "prison-pay-as-you-go bill" mandates fiscal estimates and appropriations for new crime bills.

by Shirley Krug

Wisconsin's prison population continues to soar and consequently so does the cost of our prison system. The Department of Corrections (DOC) demands and receives an ever-bigger portion of the state budget. In response, I have proposed what has become known as the "prison-pay-as-you-go bill." For the first time in state history, this bill mandates fiscal estimates and appropriations, among other things, for new crime bills.

Rapid Rise in Prison Spending

State corrections costs threaten to outstrip those of the University of Wisconsin System. Our general purpose revenue (GPR) contribution to the U.W. System went up 12.2 percent from the last biennium to this one. During that same period, GPR spending for corrections rose 26.2 percent.

Prison spending has unbalanced our system of justice. Probation and parole agents are in short supply. Court dockets are jammed for lack of circuit judges. Civil court cases take years to schedule in some places.

Counties are crying for more assistant district attorneys. The governor vetoed the addition of 17.5 such prosecutors from the budget bill. Various measures to add assistant district attorneys this year have been proposed. Whether they will be approved cannot be predicted.

And the justice system is just one example of a vital area of state government that is forced to scrape by while our prisons absorb an ever-larger share of our financial resources.

Political Motivations

Let's be honest: One reason that prison spending has spun out of control is that legislators want to establish records for being tough on crime. When a particularly heinous or troubling crime occurs, we are assured that someone will offer a new bill enhancing the penalty. These bills have come to be called "crime du jour legislation."

Here are some facts about our prison system in the "crime du jour" era:

• Between 1990 and 1999 the Wisconsin prison population increased by 162 percent. DOC costs have more than doubled in that time.

• Wisconsin's prison population grew by 19 percent from summer 1997 to summer 1998, while the national prison population grew by 4.8 percent.

Wisconsin has enjoyed an economic boom for several years. Tax revenues have grown steadily. Still, our state budgets remain tight, largely because of the costs of running prisons and building new ones.

In Wisconsin, lawmakers have been free to enact stiffer penalties or create new crimes unmindful of burgeoning correctional system costs. That is because crime bills are the only spending bills for which fiscal estimates or appropriations are not required.

Unlike other programs, the costs of enhanced penalties continue even if the law enacting them is revoked. Anyone convicted under an enhanced penalty will remain in prison until the sentence is completed.

Some 70 percent of police chiefs surveyed said they thought prevention programs offer a more effective crime deterrent strategy than trying more juvenile offenders as adults. The survey was conducted in October 1999 by Stephen Mastrofski and Scott Keeter, professors at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. The study was commissioned by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a bipartisan, nonprofit organization of police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, and victims of violence.

After-school and educational child care programs are more effective than hiring more police officers or putting surveillance cameras in schools, according to 87 percent of the police chiefs surveyed by Mastrofski and Keeter.

The problem in Wisconsin continues to be that legislators use the wealth of the state disproportionately for bars and bricks. Local prevention programs like those preferred by the police chiefs get whatever is left, if anything. Strategies that might really take a bite out of crime in the long run apparently don't have the political appeal that "crime du jour" bills do.

Getting Back on Course

The "prison-pay-as-you-go bill" is designed to inject fiscal reality and responsibility into this atmosphere of prison expansion. Here are the main provisions:

• A fiscal estimate is required for any bill that would create a new crime, increase the period of imprisonment for an existing crime, or increase the period of probation or parole. Currently all bills that affect state or local costs must include such an estimate, with the exception of crime bills.

• Both houses of the Legislature are prohibited from voting on a crime bill unless an appropriation is attached.

• The appropriation for each new crime or penalty enhancement law must equal the amount of additional operational and capital costs for housing prisoners for two years.

• The money appropriated would be set aside in a corrections special reserve fund that could be used only for debt payments on correctional facilities, DOC operational costs, or community corrections programs.

• Any interest created by the reserve fund would be used for child abuse prevention efforts. Child abuse is a major factor in contributing to criminal behavior.

Wide Bipartisan Support

This proposal was forged with participation by staff from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, Legislative Council, Department of Corrections, and Dane County. Bipartisan supporters include Attorney General Jim Doyle, Senate Republican Leader Mary Panzer, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Conclusion

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Gov. Thompson said he will sign this bill if it gets to his desk.

"I think the legislators need to know that every time they pass a bill that's going to lock people up that there's a cost to it," the newspaper quoted Gov. Thompson as saying. "I know from looking at all the budgets that I have to on prisons, and on opening up a prison, how expensive it is," the governor added.

It is imperative that we put crime bills on the same footing as every other piece of legislation that spends money. We need to determine the costs and find the dollars. If we don't, the operating expense of our prison system might put every other important goal of state government at risk.

This bill will not prevent passage of crime bills. What it will do, for the first time, is put these proposals into direct competition with bills to cut taxes or enhance programs.

For the good of our state, that is how it must be. I invite readers to call their legislators and urge them to support the "prison-pay-as-you-go" measure. The legislative hotline number for contacting legislators is (800) 362-9427.

Wisconsin Lawyer