By Dave Lucas
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New Paltz, NY – A new report finds New York numbers among 40 states where prison costs are higher than corrections department budgets reflect. Hudson Valley Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports.
The new study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York City-based research organization that tracks criminal justice trends, calculates New York State s total costs for its adult corrections and prison programs at $3.3 billion.
The report, entitled, The Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers, found that among the 40 states that responded to a survey, the cost of prisons was $38.8 billion in fiscal year 2010, $5.4 billion more than what their corrections budgets reflected. States costs outside their corrections departments ranged from less than 1 percent of total prison costs in Arizona to as much as 34 percent in Connecticut.
Corrections spending is normally tracked by comparing the budgets for prison and parole agencies. The Vera Institute study includes additional costs such as contributions to pension and benefit programs and capital costs.
Nationally, corrections spending is the second fastest-growing budget item for states, behind Medicaid. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in 2011 that he ordered seven New York state prisons closed, fulfilling his pledge to consolidate the state's correctional facilities based on a declining inmate population and providing significant savings to New York state taxpayers.
The decline in prison population is also attributed to New York's investment in Alternatives to Incarceration or ATI s- which began back in the 1980s.
Staff from the Vera Institute of Justice's Center on Sentencing and Corrections and Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit developed a methodology to calculate the taxpayer cost of prisons, including costs outside states corrections budgets. 40 states participated in the survey, including New York, Connecticut and Vermont.
The New York State Department of Corrections did not return calls for comment in time for broadcast.