The National Prison Overcrowding Project: Policy Analysis and Politics,a New Approach

Abstract

The National Prison Overcrowding Project is operated by the Center for Effective Public Policy. The project took shape in 1981, growing out of the desire of the National Institute of Corrections and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation to incorporate a broad systemic view in their efforts to control overcrowding. The Center has worked with Michigan, Colorado, South Carolina, and Oregon. In each of these states a group of significant and diverse policymakers now exists whose members understand how their criminal justice system works and take responsibility for changing it. In its work with the states, the Center facilitates a process aimed at achieving long-term, systemic change rather than simply quick-fix solutions. The focus is the state policy group, composed of policymakers from all three branches of government as well as high-ranking officials from criminal justice agencies, local law enforcement, and private citizens. National staff from the Center work with state project staff to take the policy group through a series of steps designed to produce problem definition and analysis, the information required for the analysis, the selection of policy options, and the implementation and monitoring of the options. Because of the value-laden as well as technical nature of the subject matter, the participation of all members in this policy analysis is critical.

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References

1. For example, the deployment of police and their arrest policies; enhancement legislation passed by legislators in order to increase penalties for criminal behavior; paroling policies and practices.

2. A facilitator is a group-process consultant whose function in a meeting is to help the group work together most effectively.

3. Most task forces do not operate this way. Typically, staff prepare agendas, gather data, and write reports. These reports are seldom read by commission members, much less understood, and yet are often the basis of the group's decisions.

4. For example, many inmates in Michigan prisons serve less than one year because of the frequent use of that state's Emergency Powers Act. In response to that, some judges have begun sentencing offenders to one-year terms in county jails to ensure that they serve that time. This practice has resulted in an increase in jail overcrowding in Michigan. Policymakers must be alert for this kind of unintended outcome of a policy change.

5. See Gail S. Funke , “The Economics of Prison Crowding,” this issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

6. See Robert Yin , Planning for Implementation, Center for Effective Public Policy, Working Papers (Philadelphia: Center for Effective Public Policy, 1983).

7. For an account of the proceedings, see Report of the Policy Team Retreat, Michigan Prison Overcrowding Project, Center for Effective Public Policy, Working Papers (Philadelphia: Center for Effective Public Policy, 1983).