The budget and prisons

by: Hopeful

Sun Sep 19, 2010 at 02:47:27 PM EDT

When judges here sentence convicted criminals, a new and unusual variable is available for them to consider: what a given punishment will cost the State of Missouri....

Legal experts say no other state systematically provides such information to judges, a practice put into effect here last month by the state's sentencing advisory commission, an appointed board that offers guidance on criminal sentencing.

Defense lawyers and (some) fiscal conservatives like it, while as you can imagine prosecutors are unhappy: "Justice isn't subject to a mathematical formula," said one.  

Let's look at Governor Christie's budget documents. The state department of corrections spends over $800 million a year on state prisons. The Budget in Brief(PDF) puts this number in perspective. If you consider the actual state government  -- the "Direct State Services" on page 69 -- the Department of Correction is 28% of the total, almost double the next largest department!  Well, if you followed the campaign last year you remember that you could convince every state worker to work for free yet still not close the state's budget gap: My previous calculation doesn't include school aid, municipal aid, higher education, hospitals, etc. Compared to the total state budget, we're talking "only" 3% of the total budget. Nevertheless, it seems to me that providing this kind of factual information to judges would be very worthwhile. No doubt there are many robbers who should be imprisoned at a total cost of $50K each rather than $9K probation, to use an example from the article, but sometimes the savings is worthwhile.

If we are to enter a new age of conservative austerity, let judges be aware of what they're spending.