The Prison Problem

Why didn't Mayor Nutter mention prison costs in his first budget address?

by Tom Namako

budget crunch

At first glance, it wasn't hard to determine the winners and losers in Mayor Nutter's inaugural budget. Seventy-eight million dollars over five years to hire police officers? No one's complaining. A nearly $5 million decrease for the city's fleet? Better luck next year.

There was one oddity, however. While most of the winners — like Fairmount Park ($1.5 million), the city's health centers ($3 million) and EMS ($3.8 million) — scored a shout-out in Nutter's address to City Council, the prison system, recipient of a $6 million increase in 2009 and an average increase of about $5.4 million a year for the next four years, wasn't mentioned.

Nutter may not have had anything to say about prisons, but the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA), the state body that monitors the city's finances, did. The mayor's five-year plan "does not directly address the impacts of the increasingly higher prison census or prisons costs," it said in a report released the same day as the budget. Explains Uri Monson, PICA's acting executive director, "They just don't have a good answer for prison overcrowding yet."

Nutter wasn't bragging about the new money for jails because, most likely, he knew that in the face of skyrocketing costs, he wasn't giving them enough.

Prison costs have increased about $9 million a year on average over the past 10 years, according to the 2007 PICA report "City Budget Behind Bars," with expenses rising from $117 million in 1997 to $208 million in 2007. The prisons have gone over budget every year in the same time frame. That trend won't change unless we throw fewer people in jail. Nutter did dedicate a page of his five-year plan to reducing Philadelphia's inmate population, offering suggestions like electronic monitoring for nonviolent offenders and drug addict treatment programs. But even so, PICA has doubts.

"While some strategies are discussed for containing prisons costs, it is unclear how quickly they can be implemented or how successful they will be," this year's report said.

What's more, Acting Prisons Commissioner Louis Giorla says he expects the administration's new crime-fighting plan to significantly increase the inmate population, as a flood of beat officers arrest people with outstanding warrants and lost and stolen gun violations. (Everyone, except maybe fugitives, can agree that these tactics are necessary. But the point still stands.)

An inmate influx would likely just exacerbate the prison system's cash-draining formula: First, police arrest offenders. Then those offenders wait in jail while the overburdened court and legal systems operate at a snail's pace. And while they wait, the city must pay the ever-rising costs for food, health care and staffing. In the meantime, the crunch for space leaves inmates locked up at the Police Administration Building for long periods of time, at detention facilities in New Jersey and in former recreation rooms that now house about a dozen prisoners, according to prisoner advocates, court documents and Giorla.

In an e-mailed response to questions, Giorla said, "The important thing is that the budget was increased and not reduced as it was in the last few years. ... I think the funding levels are now adequate to address our needs."

But David Rudovksy, a civil rights lawyer and professor at Penn Law School, disagrees. "Given the current rate of growth of the prison population, the incoming inmates and the insufficient intervention programs, it is a totally unrealistic budget," he says. "If the administration can reduce the population, the numbers may be realistic. That will take a massive effort given the new policing priorities, and I am highly skeptical."

Nutter inherited this prison problem, but, with this budget, doesn't appear to be making things too much easier for himself. Whether he mentions overcrowding costs in next year's address may depend on how much prisons spend this year, especially if the system overspends again. One thing is for sure: The inmates will keep coming. According to Giorla, the city's prison population hasn't seen a decrease since the year of its founding: 1683.

(tom.namako@citypaper.net)