Will Arizona Prisons sustain budget cuts?

Will Arizona Prisons sustain budget cuts?

By Carl R. ToersBijns

The Arizona governor and state legislature will have some tough choices to make this coming session regarding budget cuts and contingency plans for their operating funding costs. It is likely that the big bus of the Corrections Department will have to take some of those cuts and rely on operating their prisons with a reduction in staff and other resources.

Although any closures of prisons is not likely to happen as it is in other states, there will be a big change how they will have to operate them and endure the entire fiscal year on less money than last year or the year before. It will depend on how deep the cuts are and what has to be cut back in order to meet allocations and expectations.

Although it may seem premature, it is likely that at this moment, based on feedback from the governor’s office and key legislators, initial budget scenarios are being developed as well as revised staffing patterns based on prison population projections and other anticipated needs. 

The agency will address attrition rates, pending retirements, freeze hiring and maintain a strategy for vacancy savings for the entire fiscal year leaving staff pretty much with what is left over after these employees leave state service. If the past is an indication of the future, disciplinary actions will increase and probation periods will be used to lay off officers before they reach their permanent status and termination will be used as a management tool to reduce staffing patterns and personnel.

The director and his staff will submit various formats of scenarios that will allow the governor’s staff and legislative members a good peek at what the bottom line is and how deep a cut the agency can survive without compromising public safety. The main concerns are three fold; personnel and benefits, medical costs and other fixed expenses related to prison capacity and population needs.

Perhaps there will be a shift in priorities and the director will re-allocate more resources towards new or existing community corrections programming that are less costly and easier to manage.  They will have to focus on reducing their enormous water and electric utility bills and implement other waste reduction methods to acquire a better handle on the costs of food and clothing, cable services, and other costs that may be considered either frivolous or unnecessary for prisons to have.

The director will likely increase the number of low custody level prison work details outside the prisons and into the communities to acquire shared funding for operating such mutual government agreements that include inmate work details for county and municipal government agencies and related public services.  This is a viable avenue for the agency but will require the mutual agencies to provide the supervision and transport costs in order to be eligible for such inmate services within their community and local government public works.

Perhaps for once in the last five years, there will be a serious focus on recidivism and manage it more effectively so that the prison population may indeed be reduced and the incident of repeat offenders coming back into prisons be reduced by looking at those technical violators a little closer and continue their parole time in the community corrections programs rather than paying a premium price for a bed inside the prisons.

You more than will likely see a consolidation plan with the private prison contractors for transferring some of the state’s secondary custodial roles to the private prisons to save money and reduce staffing costs. This would also cancel or reduce some of the private vendor contracts the state currently has to keep essential services going but at a cost that can be done cheaper if absorbed in the consolidation plan.

December 23, 2012