Economic Implications of Standards Affecting Correctional Programs

Abstract

Many of the specific recommendations of the Corrections Task Force of the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals have impacts that cut across traditional administrative or program designations. Two broad sets of such standards are examined here: parole programs and procedures, and proposals for changes in institutional work experiences. In both cases the Task Force standards might be expensive to implement by themselves, but individual proposals generate a cost saving in other activities that partially or even completely offsets the budgetary impact of the standard.

The Task Force's recommendations on parole procedures include intensive supervision, financial support and job placement for parolees, and expansion of parolee rights in grant and revocation hearings. Standards in each of these matters could add as much as $700 per case to current parole costs. But all of the recommendations are designed to increase the likelihood of parolee success and thus to reduce institutional populations. The average cost per inmate in major institutions is approximately $5,000. Some of the Task Force standards can be expected to reduce institutional populations by more than enough to offset the additional costs of parole, while in other cases the Task Force proposals would probably impose net-but small-budgetary costs on correctional systems.

The Corrections report's proposals for changes in prison work experiences and pay imply basic restructuring of institutional work programs. Upgrading prison industries would impose enormous costs on either correctional systems or private employers who might be invited to operate establishments in prisons. In return, either correctional systems or private employers would generate enormous increases in output and sales, which would more than repay the costs of new capital equipment and higher inmate wages as long as the goods could be sold in markets that historically have been closed by law and custom. The Corrections standard for prevailing wages for maintenance workers, in contrast, would generate cost offsets only if some maintenance workers could be reassigned to profitable prison industries. On balance, the net cost of implementing all the standards dealing with institutional work and pay is likely to be very close to zero.