Summary
Strategy 1: Examine drivers of corrections costs.
Identify how much states spend on prisons and supervision.
- Track and publish spending on prison, probation, and parole populations.
- Track and publish recidivism data for all people leaving prison and starting probation.
Analyze prison and supervision population trends to understand how they are driving costs.
- Require corrections and supervision agencies to track and publish data on current and past population counts.
- Analyze data to understand the drivers of any changes in the size and/or composition of prison and supervision populations.
- Develop and implement policies to address growing corrections costs and/or populations.
Assess how state prison and supervision populations are projected to change.
- Require corrections and supervision agencies to regularly craft and publish population projections that look ahead at least five years.
- Ensure that the state legislature receives population projections.
- Consider population projections and potential impacts in the development of new legislative policy or corrections practices.