Study: Mass. fifth in nation for adults in prison, probation or parole
By Laura Crimaldi | Monday, March 2, 2009 Boston Herald

An astonishing one in 24 Bay State adults were either behind bars or under community supervision at the end of 2007, costing taxpayers $1.25 billion, according to a national study published today.

The report, prepared by the Pew Center on the States, ranked Massachusetts fifth in the country in terms of the number of adults in prison or jail or under the supervision of probation or parole. The study said that $1.25 billion was spent on corrections at the state and federal level in 2007 statewide.

“In any year, spending $1.25 billion dollars on corrections is stunning.

In a fiscal crisis, this kind of spending is unacceptably foolish. If finances is what finally moves the state to revamp its correctional policies, so be it,” said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services.

The Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, which oversees the state’s prisons and parole system, could not immediately provide comment on the study. State workers are not required to come into work today until noon.

The state with the highest number of adults involved with the correction system was Georgia, where one in 13 adults or 562,763 people were in the penal system in 2007, the Pew study said. There were 206,241 people involved in the penal system in Massachusetts.

The state ranks even higher when it comes to parolees and probationers living in the community.

Massachusetts had the third highest rate of community supervision with 1 in 28 adults or 179,854 people answering to parole and probation officers at the state and federal level.

Parole is a more cost-effective way of monitoring offenders, the study said. It costs $130.16 to incarcerate an adult for one day. That same figure pays for 18 days of parole supervision in the community, the report said.

The Pew Center said that for every dollar Massachusetts spent on prisons in 2008, it spent four cents on parole. The report, entitled One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections,” looked at prison populations at the federal, state and county level.

“At long last research that has proven what advocates have been saying for years: Let’s invest in people, not prisons,” said Lyn Levy, executive director of SPAN Inc., a non-profit service provider for ex-offenders. “It’s not only the right thing to do; it’s cost effective, it works, and it makes us safer.”

Nationally, Pew found that the exploding number of people on probation or parole has ballooned the American corrections system population to more than 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 adults.

While most of those offenders live in the community as a probationer or parolee, the Pew report found that nearly 90 percent of state corrections dollars are spent on prisons.

In terms of the number of adults in a jail or prison, the state ranks much lower nationally at number 47. There were 26,387 adults behind bars in 2007 or 1 in 190 people.

The District of Columbia had the highest incarceration rate in that category with 1 in 50 adults or two percent of its population in a prison or jail.

The Pew report affirms state Department of Correction figures that indicate an exploding prison population. Last year, the state began installing bunk beds in single cells at the maximum security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley to address systemwide overcrowding.

In 1982, one in 127 adults were invovlved in the Bay State correction system, Pew found.

The DOC, which runs 18 prisons, has a spending plan of $543 million for the fiscal year that ends in June. Gov. Deval Patrick’s budget proposal for Fiscal 2010 proposes a modest decrease in spending to $542 million.

The Parole Board supervises 8,000 parolees annually, according to its Web site. Its budget for this year is $19.4 million.

Office of the Commissioner of Probation figures show that the probation system supervised 256,952 people in Fiscal Year 2008. More than 28 percent of those probationers are juveniles or involved in the Probate and Family Court.

Probation’s operating budget is $142 million. Its proposed spending plan for the fiscal year that begins on July 1 is $151 million, according to the governor’s budget Web site.

lcrimaldi@bostonherald.com
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1155690