Published: Saturday, December 4, 2010
Guest commentary
Responsible corrections reform requires a sentence review board
As correctional officers and other Department of Corrections (DOC) employees are being laid off and furloughed, many of those opposing these cost-cutting measures are using scare tactics and other misinformation to support their position. Here are just a few examples:
•Staff will be endangered if the prisoner-to-officer ratio increases. Truth: Since Washington State Penitentiary's new Super-Max facility opened, violence in all other prisons has decreased, according to DOC officials. This is because prisoners who pose the highest security threat have been isolated at this institution.
•Prisoners get to watch cable television and lift weights, all on the taxpayer dime. Truth: Since the mid-1990s, these costs have been assessed to prisoners entirely, all of whom are charged mandatory fees.
•Public safety will be jeopardized by these cutbacks. Actually, correctional officers are being sacrificed on the pretext that early release of any prisoners would endanger the public; their jobs are being slashed to maintain the current prison population.
Those directly affected by these cutbacks should understand that prisoner programs are always the first to go when correctional budgets are squeezed; and today, there is nothing more to squeeze from prisoners. To maintain the current system — a system that is in dire need of reform — officers, their families and this community will have to suffer the consequences.
But many others too will pay the price. This legislative session, lawmakers will be faced with a multi-billion-dollar shortfall. Funding for health, education and other social services will be slashed while substantive changes to our criminal justice policies will remain taboo. Citizens should ask exactly what they are paying for.
Washington used to imprison only a third as many people as it does today. The people committing crime have not changed, only our criminal justice policies have. So, what has the tripling of our incarceration rate since the 1980s bought taxpayers? Increases in mandatory minimum sentences, long determinate sentences, life sentences for non-violent 3-strike offenders for adults and children, as well as the continued confinement of the disabled, the old, and the infirm. Proponents of such measures trumpet the modest decline in crime rates, while they neglect to mention that these declines occurred irrespective of the rate of incarceration. Crime dropped in states with and without parole, with and without mandatory sentences.
If you like the status quo, then you have no reason to complain when the Legislature slashes jobs and social services to protect the sacred cow of corrections. If, however, you believe there is a way to implement rational changes to this system, then we would like to suggest a better way forward. A process can be implemented that would review prisoners to evaluate what, if any, risk they continue to pose to public safety, and whether or not public resources are best utilized by having these offenders serve their terms in less than total confinement — under house arrest or electronic monitoring instead.
There are many factors that indicate an individual's likelihood to reoffend, such as:
•Family support.
•Community support.
•Education/vocational training.
•Participation in self-help programs.
•Prison disciplinary history.
•Criminal history.
While there are other factors, these are some of the strongest. In fact, these are the very factors used by the five-member Clemency and Pardons Board to evaluate petitions and advise the governor on sentence commutations in extraordinary cases. The board operates under the pretense that our current system is reasonable. It clearly is not. The problem is that Washington's laws have made extraordinary sentences ordinary and at great cost to our state economy. Only by instituting a sentence review board will we be able to address the excessive reliance upon incarceration.
JJ Bourgeois, an inmate at the Monroe Correctional Complex, wrote this piece on behalf of the prison's Black Prisoners' Caucus.
•Staff will be endangered if the prisoner-to-officer ratio increases. Truth: Since Washington State Penitentiary's new Super-Max facility opened, violence in all other prisons has decreased, according to DOC officials. This is because prisoners who pose the highest security threat have been isolated at this institution.
•Prisoners get to watch cable television and lift weights, all on the taxpayer dime. Truth: Since the mid-1990s, these costs have been assessed to prisoners entirely, all of whom are charged mandatory fees.
•Public safety will be jeopardized by these cutbacks. Actually, correctional officers are being sacrificed on the pretext that early release of any prisoners would endanger the public; their jobs are being slashed to maintain the current prison population.
Those directly affected by these cutbacks should understand that prisoner programs are always the first to go when correctional budgets are squeezed; and today, there is nothing more to squeeze from prisoners. To maintain the current system — a system that is in dire need of reform — officers, their families and this community will have to suffer the consequences.
But many others too will pay the price. This legislative session, lawmakers will be faced with a multi-billion-dollar shortfall. Funding for health, education and other social services will be slashed while substantive changes to our criminal justice policies will remain taboo. Citizens should ask exactly what they are paying for.
Washington used to imprison only a third as many people as it does today. The people committing crime have not changed, only our criminal justice policies have. So, what has the tripling of our incarceration rate since the 1980s bought taxpayers? Increases in mandatory minimum sentences, long determinate sentences, life sentences for non-violent 3-strike offenders for adults and children, as well as the continued confinement of the disabled, the old, and the infirm. Proponents of such measures trumpet the modest decline in crime rates, while they neglect to mention that these declines occurred irrespective of the rate of incarceration. Crime dropped in states with and without parole, with and without mandatory sentences.
If you like the status quo, then you have no reason to complain when the Legislature slashes jobs and social services to protect the sacred cow of corrections. If, however, you believe there is a way to implement rational changes to this system, then we would like to suggest a better way forward. A process can be implemented that would review prisoners to evaluate what, if any, risk they continue to pose to public safety, and whether or not public resources are best utilized by having these offenders serve their terms in less than total confinement — under house arrest or electronic monitoring instead.
There are many factors that indicate an individual's likelihood to reoffend, such as:
•Family support.
•Community support.
•Education/vocational training.
•Participation in self-help programs.
•Prison disciplinary history.
•Criminal history.
While there are other factors, these are some of the strongest. In fact, these are the very factors used by the five-member Clemency and Pardons Board to evaluate petitions and advise the governor on sentence commutations in extraordinary cases. The board operates under the pretense that our current system is reasonable. It clearly is not. The problem is that Washington's laws have made extraordinary sentences ordinary and at great cost to our state economy. Only by instituting a sentence review board will we be able to address the excessive reliance upon incarceration.
JJ Bourgeois, an inmate at the Monroe Correctional Complex, wrote this piece on behalf of the prison's Black Prisoners' Caucus.
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