It is important for taxpayers to understand that the public safety concerns prompted by a person's release from prison or his violation of probation or parole cannot simply be solved by incarcerating people longer or returning violators of probation or parole, without exception, to prison or jail. Such a strategy is fiscally unsustainable. The introduction to this Report reviewed the acute budget pressures causing governors and state lawmakers, Republican and Democrat alike, to explore ways to manage the growth of their corrections systems. As Governor Mike Huckabee (R–AR) explained, "efforts to provide for the public safety must encompass more than simply locking more people up for longer periods. If that's the extent of our strategy, we'll go broke." ^[1]   Governor Bob Riley (R–AL), seeking ways to close the wide gap between state spending and state revenues, expressed similar concerns following a visit to an overcrowded correctional facility. "To say that the things I saw, felt, and heard that day were disturbing is an understatement. The dormitories were severely overcrowded, and one corrections officer was responsible for keeping control of almost 200 inmates. As many others have said, our prison system truly is a ticking time bombâ€"especially considering that it is operating at more than 200 percent capacity." ^[2]  

Reacting to this budget pressure by slashing already threadbare prison and jail based programs, further swelling the caseloads of community corrections officers, or shuttering community-based programs simply exacerbates the problem by reducing preparation for people exiting prison and jail to succeed in the community. ^[3]   To make matters worse, the services and supports they need to succeed in the community--and to comply with conditions of release--are not available. Community corrections officers, particularly those without evidence-based tools to discern the fraction of probationers and parolees who need to be monitored carefully, are too overwhelmed to supervise anyone effectively. Frantic to avert another public relations nightmare, and with few sanctions available to them other than reincarceration, they respond reflexively to violations, revoking probationers and parolees in record numbers. ^[4]   In sum, these combinations of events cause prison or jail admissions to continue to climb; policymakers who continue to attempt to build their way out of the problem will accelerate this vicious cycle.

As illustrated above, addressing the issue of prisoner re-entry simply by expanding the capacity of the corrections system is "the financial implications notwithstanding" ineffective policy. In California, for example, corrections expenses as a percentage of the state's general fund increased nearly 17 percent from 1989–90 to 2002–03; due in part to this increase, higher education expenses during this period decreased as a percentage of the general fund. ^[5]   Yet the growth of the prison population has not abated, and the state will need to continue to build and open prisons to avert further overcrowding.

Public officials must articulate the value of enabling community corrections officers to distinguish effectively between high risk and low risk offenders. Furthermore, public officials should explain how more nuanced policies will enable community corrections officers to focus resources on people most likely to recidivate and to supervise those people more closely than they have been to date.

Overall, the job of an opinion leader seeking public support for re-entry initiatives like those described in this Report is to explain how those initiatives will increase public safety. At the same time, he or she should educate the public how perpetuating the status quo compromises public safety and is fiscally irresponsible.

Example: State Legislators, Connecticut General Assembly

In 2003, budget negotiations between the General Assembly and the Governor reached an impasse; the two sides were $250 million apart. At the same time, the prison population was growing at a brisk rate of nearly 5 percent per year. ^[6]   To house the increasing number of inmates, funds were budgeted to send additional inmates out of state. A bipartisan group of legislative leaders took to the airwaves with a proposal to invest in a series of re-entry initiatives. Their message was that rates of failure among probationers and parolees are unacceptably high and worsening; that the state does not have the resources to continue to house the growing number of probation and parole violators; and that to increase public safety the state needs to invest in community corrections, as well as in services and supports in the communities receiving the majority of people released from prison and jail. As a result of their efforts, every major newspaper in the state editorialized in support of the proposal, public opinion polls conducted by the University of Connecticut found overwhelming support for the initiative, and the legislation passed with nearly unanimous support in both chambers.