As part of the state's effort to reform its justice system, legislators heard Tuesday about how the prison population has changed over the past decade.Researchers from the Pew Charitable Trust are reviewing data about the state’s justice system.
KDLG's Molly Dischner reports:
Audio Transcript posted below:
DILLINGHAM: During a joint meeting of the House and Senate judiciary committees, Pew’s Terry Schuster talked about how the state’s prison population has changed, and what that could mean for the future.
“Absent further reform, the prison population is expected to grow 27 percent, that’s over the next decade, costing at least $169 million dollars," Schuster said.
Based on current growth and no reforms, the researchers project that 1400 additional prison beds would be needed after 2015; by 2017, the state would need to re-open currently closed prisons, and eventually either new prisons would be needed or offenders would need be shipped outside.
Schuster said Alaska’s prison population has increased 27 percent in the past decade, with mostly nonviolent offenders in state prisons. More than a quarter of those in jail are pre-trial, and the number of pretrial inmates has increased 81 percent.
“This growth that we’ve seen over the last decade, it’s not driven by more people coming in, pre-trial, it’s driven by staying for longer periods of time, pre-trial," Schuster said.
The researchers also found that felons have been staying in prison longer, there’s been an increase in supervision violators over the past decade, almost two-thirds of released offenders return to prison within three years.
Between changing costs and an increasing prison population, Schuster said state spending on corrections has increased about 60 percent over the past two decades.
The 13-member Alaska Criminal Justice Commission is charged with developing policy recommendations for how to change the state’s justice system. The Pew analysis is expected to inform their work. That commission plans to meet this fall to discuss the data, with a final report and recommendations expected to come out in December.