Like MIke Konzcal, I'm disappointed about the difficulties Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is having with criminal-justice reform in Indiana:
When it comes to actually reducing the prison population, which is where all the savings is really going to be, [Mitch] Daniels is hitting major problems within the DA's office and among the conservative rank-and-file. This quote from Indiana's Sen. Sue Glick, R-LaGrange, a member of the Senate’s Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters Committee, is telling: “We just don’t accept the idea that because the Department of Correction has a bed problem that we should be releasing serious felons back on the street.”
Without making the case for why mass incarceration is bad in and of itself, not just as a budgeting issue, it's going to be harder to move this. During times of budget stress you see an increase in fear among the general population. So any desire to use the state's balance sheet as an argument for changing prison policy is going to be offset by an increase in an xenophobia and retrenchment that expresses itself most forcibly in the language of crime control.
You can't significantly reduce prison costs without reducing the number of people in prison. Making the moral case for reducing the headcount is less appealing to conservatives than the fiscal argument. Once you make the fiscal argument, though, then you run into problems with conservatives who want to spend less money on corrections and who have no interest in actually shrinking the prison population. We saw this during the gubernatorial campaign in Florida, where unions pummeled Rick Scott for wanting to let criminals out on the street, when he was really just trying to cut costs by slashing their benefits. By itself, that wouldn't have been very effective. The impulse to cut costs without reducing the number of incarcerated creates perverse policy incentives, like onerous user fees imposed on people going through the criminal-justice system that make people more likely to seek out illicit forms of income.
Anyway, the point is, Konzcal's right, it really can't just be about cutting costs. It has to be about all the other adverse economic, social, and public-safety consequences of mass incarceration. You say it's just about cutting costs, and all the folks with entrenched interests in growing the size of the prison system will accuse you of wanting to let killers out into the street just to save a dime.
The stakes are also bigger than just Indiana. If Daniels' plan works, it gives Republicans a political incentive to sign onto the kind of criminal-justice reform policies liberals want. If it fails, the road to reform gets much rockier.
