Do you wish that Pennsylvania could magically erase at least one-half billion dollars of its budget deficit? That erase exists! Yet Governor Rendell and the General Assembly have spurned this readily available budget balancer!
Instead, at least $173 million of federal stimulus funding is being diverted to the Department of Corrections (DOC) to reduce a $3 billion budget deficit. Why?? A home -made solution, authorized by long-existing state statues, is at hand for resolution of this financial crisis!
Why are the DOC and Board of Probation and Parole not releasing thousands if not tens of thousands of eligible DOC inmates, thereby significantly reducing the DOC’s $1.7 billion annual budget and the inherent deficit by hundreds of millions of dollars?
Parole! Reparole! Prerelease! A majority of this state’s 50,000 prison inmates (1) have competed their court-imposed minimum term of incarceration and are thus immediately eligible for release to parole, or (2) are technical parole violators eligible for release to reparole without delay, or (3) are within one year of completing their minimum term and are thereby eligible for prerelease.
Prerelease! This decades-old solution to budget-draining prison overcrowding simply transfers screened inmates from prisons to various levels of supervision beyond institution boundaries. However, as our “justice” system has evolved into a lucrative ” nail ’em and jail ’em” profit base for a corrections industrial complex, budget-saving prerelease has become extinct. Parole and reparole have similar flirted with relegation of history!
Common rationale for ignoring this prerelease option is that existing halfway facilities are already overflowing. But that fails to acknowledge that those sits are crowded with parolees who need not be there inasmuch as they may be released directly to a “home-plan.” Moreover, controlling laws do not mandate that prereleased inmates remain at a halfway facility. They are required only to report to a prerelease facility where decisions are to be made regarding how and where – including a family residence – to best supervise them for the duration of their sentences. Although rarely if ever utilized, far less costly electronic monitoring may be employed where any doubt exists regarding public safety.
Now that a 2009-2010 budget is approved, these deficit erasers must be fully utilized. The current budge-busting prisoners-for-profit foundation of corrections must be expunged!
Al Walentukonis
Frenchville
