Prisoners May be Released as Federal and State Governments Face Critical Funding Decisions in 2009

The economic downturn in 2009 will force the federal government and some state governments to face critical funding decisions when it comes to prisons, says Dr. David Forde, professor of criminal justice at The University of Alabama. In fact, states like Alabama may be forced to choose between funding the prison system or schools.

“The economy is going to force this issue to the forefront,” Forde says. “Either you provide the money to the correctional system, or you continue to let it grow and take the money from somebody else. And that somebody else will be schools.”

Funding issues could result in early release for some prisoners, according to Forde, who sees officials re-evaluating sentencing guidelines with an eye toward releasing the least dangerous prisoners. Forde said he saw many papers on risk assessment for release of people from prisons and jails at the American Society of Criminology annual meetings in November. “I haven’t seen those types of papers in large numbers for 20 years,” he said. “If there’s no money to keep them in prison, somebody has to go out. And how do you let them out?”

A change of climate provided by the incoming Obama administration may contribute to this discussion in 2009, Forde says, especially when the nation may not be able to afford putting more police on the streets, which occurred during the Clinton administration.

“The reality is there is going to be a large shift in philosophy on policing and criminal justice issues,” Forde says. “There isn’t going to be money to devote to resources as would normally be done by a Democratic administration. You’ve got this lack of money, clearly different philosophies on how the criminal justice systems should be managed, and it’s going to come to a head where people are going to have to discuss openly and actively some questions that they may not have wanted to in the past.”

Forde notes that prisons across the country are overcrowded; prisons in Alabama, for example, are at between 200 percent and 300 percent capacity. Nationwide, more than 7 million people are under the supervision of some aspect of the criminal justice system including more than 2 million who are incarcerated.

“The plain and simple reality of economics is there’s not a lot of flexibility in the way prisons are run,” Forde says “We have to feed prisoners. We have to maintain the safety of the officers. Incarceration has been growing for the last 40 years, and it’s still growing. These are issues in every state, and I think we’re going to see much more open discussion of it because of the extreme problems in the economy.”