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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Ind. Gov't. - "Governor, state leaders endorse results of sentencing study"

Updating this ILB entry from yesterday, Governor Daniels this morning held a meeting on the Pew Report and issued a press release that includes the following:

The CSG Justice Center and Pew report will be released on Thursday and will include three proposed categories of policy changes:
  • Improve proportionality in sentencing and ensure prison space for the worst offenders by creating a more precise set of drug and theft sentencing laws and providing judges with more sentencing options for individuals who commit the least serious felony offenses.
  • Strengthen community supervision by focusing resources on high-risk offenders and creating incentives for supervision agencies to coordinate better with one another.
  • Reduce recidivism and bolster public safety by increasing access to community-based substance abuse and mental health treatment and enabling probation officers to respond with more effective, swift and certain sanctions.
Such changes would avoid spending $1.2 billion ($630 million in construction costs and $571 million in operating costs) associated with the state’s prison population. The plan includes an additional $37.6 million in savings from food, medical and other expenses that vary because of the size of the prison population.

The recommendations also require a reinvestment of $27 million over the next six years to strengthen probation, provide incentive funding for counties to improve outcomes for people on probation and parole, and ensure greater access to behavioral health treatment for those on supervision.

“State leaders have produced a bipartisan, data-driven policy framework that gives Indiana a real chance to achieve needed cost savings, while protecting public safety and holding offenders accountable,” said Richard Jerome, manager, Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project.

The recommendations and the CSG Justice Center/Pew report will be presented Thursday to the Criminal Code Evaluation Commission. The work over the past several months included extensive consultations with local government officials and community leaders and analysis by national experts. A 14-member steering committee was appointed that included legislators, judges, state leaders, law enforcement professionals, prosecutors and public defenders.

Tomorrow's Criminal Code meeting will be videocast.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 15, 2010 11:39 AM
Posted to Indiana Government