Rhode Island
Step 1: Analyze the prison population and spending in the communities to which people in prison often return.
Despite having a crime rate among the lowest in the country (the state’s violent crime rate is ranked the 40th lowest in the country, while its property crime rate is the 35th lowest), an independent prison population projection estimated that Rhode Island’s prison population would increase 21 percent between 2007 and 2017 at a cost to taxpayers of an additional $300 million in construction and operating expenses. For a state as small as Rhode Island, which faced a budget deficit of the same size the previous year, finding an additional $300 million in future budgets would prove difficult.
In 2007, state policymakers in Rhode Island requested intensive technical assistance from the Council of State Governments Justice Center. In response, the Justice Center provided policymakers with an analysis of the prison population that identified the factors driving the projected growth of the prison population. Some of the key highlights from that analysis included:
- The state has the second highest rate of people on probation in the U.S.: over 3 percent of the state’s adult population, or about 27,000 people, are on probation on any given day.1
- Probation sentences average 5 years in length, approximately twice as long as the national average, and in some cases, exceed 10 years.2
- With probation caseloads of more than 300 per officer, 13,000 cases have been “banked” and are no longer actively supervised. 3
- The use of parole in Rhode Island is low with less than 400 people on parole supervision. 4
- Thirty-one percent of people released from prison are reincarcerated within 1 year—a rate that is 10 percent higher than the national average. 5
- Council of State Governments Justice Center, “Increasing Public Safety and Generating Savings: Options for Rhode Island Policymakers”, February 2006.
- Ibid, “Increasing Public Safety and Generating Savings: Options for Rhode Island Policymakers”.
- Ibid, “Increasing Public Safety and Generating Savings: Options for Rhode Island Policymakers”. Rhode Island Department of Corrections, Internal Memorandum to the Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2007.
- Lauren E. Glaze and Thomas P. Bonczar, “Probation and Parole in the United States, 2005”, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ215901 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006).
- Ibid, “Increasing Public Safety and Generating Savings: Options for Rhode Island Policymakers”. Rhode Island Department of Corrections, “2004 Recidivism Study: Two-Year Follow-Up”, August 2007.