Locking Up Local Resources
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowJustice, it’s often said, should be blind. But as a matter of fiscal policy, it’s increasingly difficult to turn a blind eye to the costs of criminal justice and corrections as practiced in Indiana. As county jail populations have skyrocketed across much of the state, local officials are being shackled by budget constraints.
Indiana’s overall incarceration rate is modestly higher than the national average, with about 720 of every 100,000 Hoosiers serving time behind bars (versus roughly 700 per 100,000 for the U.S.). But it’s at the local level where an epidemic of jail overcrowding threatens to become a full-fledged fiscal crisis.
According to an analysis by the Vera Institute, more than two thirds of Indiana’s county jails are persistently over capacity. Roughly one in three counties have broken ground or are actively exploring construction of new or expanded correctional facilities.
Like most states, the majority of Indiana’s jail population is pre-conviction, held while awaiting trial. But our share of pretrial prisoners is higher than most: For every inmate who’s been found guilty, three more pre-conviction detainees are pushing jails beyond capacity.
Indiana’s overcrowding issue has also been driven by criminal justice reforms that sent certain low-level offenders to local jails instead of state prisons. Counties are reimbursed for housing these felons, but not enough to cover all expenses. And when this flood of new prisoners overwhelms existing space, locals are also left to bear the burden of adding more jail beds.
Census data on state and local government budgets shows the impact on capital expenditures: Across the U.S., states spend an average of $2 on correctional construction for every $1 spent by local government. In Indiana, the ratio is flipped: Localities spend a dollar for every 95 cents spent by the state.
What are the opportunity costs and fiscal consequences of these trends?
The Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute (IFPI) is poised to release a new study by Purdue Professor Larry DeBoer analyzing how overall local revenues are keeping up with costs, asking: Can urban, rural and suburban local governments meet average (per capita) public service demands within average tax rates?
The answer is calculated with a ‘Revenue Capacity-Service Cost Index’ – the lower the index, the more strain on local units to either raise taxes or cut expenditures. Roughly 60% of Hoosiers live in a county with a negative Capacity-Cost Index; given significant overlap with counties that are building or planning new jails, it’s obvious that growing corrections budgets are crowding out other priorities (and forcing tax rates up) across a large swath of Indiana.
With K-12 operating costs largely funded by the state, the two largest (and fastest-growing) local obligations are public safety and debt service. Many localities (especially in more urban and industrial areas) already struggle to make necessary road repairs and provide other basic services. Capital resources are already scarce, roughly ten cents of every dollar of local spending, and building bigger jails is hardly the most compelling investment for these communities.
Quality schools, well-maintained infrastructure, parks and other public amenities, and downtown redevelopment initiatives are among the most commonly-identified priorities for boosting local quality of life and economic development, to attract new people and employers. Public safety is also crucial, but are the policies filling our jails really making us safer?
Raising state reimbursement rates for ‘Level 6’ offenders is an obvious stopgap, but more comprehensive approaches are needed as well: Encouraging regional jail facilities (already possible but seldom pursued) to share construction costs across counties, for example.
To attack root causes of overcrowding, lawmakers should explore bail reform and diversion programs to reduce pretrial incarceration. Rethinking penalties for non-violent crimes and prosecutorial discretion on sentencing also belong on the agenda (a bill that could have overruled county prosecutors and added unfunded mandates to the local justice system – SB436 – stalled in the General Assembly this year).
Indiana has also made strides in helping ex-offenders re-enter the workforce, joining the ranks of taxpayers instead of refilling jails through the cycle of recidivism. Policies like expeditious expungement of older offenses can help ease the transition from jail to jobs; Indiana’s Workforce Recovery program emphasizes treatment and employment instead of criminalizing addiction.
The list of policy options goes on and on. This afternoon, the Senate Corrections & Criminal Law Committee will consider HB1346 (authored by Representative Randall Frye), which assigns the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute a data-driven analysis of jail overcrowding and outreach to county sheriffs to identify solutions.
It’s a promising step forward on an issue that demands attention and action during next year’s budget-writing session as well. As Indiana’s local governments operate under growing fiscal pressure, we’re overdue in thinking about whether our policies around crime and punishment are locking up too many resources that could be put to more productive use.