Declining Demographics
Has a 30-Year Trend Ended?By Stephen A. Carter, AICP
Principal, Carter Goble Lee LLC
Over lunch recently, John Ingrassia and Ed Schroder, senior managers for San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, and I were talking numbers. Like many large counties, the number of inmates in the system has been declining, and not by just a few, but in the 15 percent or more category on an average day. This is a conversation that is being repeated in many jurisdictions. We’ve been through cyclical declines over the past three decades, but none that has endured like this one.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department is not the only jurisdiction that is asking why, during the worst economy in decades, are we incarcerating fewer inmates? Although historical data suggests that some types of crimes actually increase in down economies, the current trough seems to contradict a long-held truism that incarceration rises as paychecks shrink. Strangely, the economy may be a major contributor to the fewer inmates.
From wide ranging discussions with system managers across the country, here are a few reasons that have been advanced:
1. Ugly Economy: With reduced revenue, local governments are making hard choices regarding reductions in force and decreased overtime pay. Some have offered that with fewer hours of street patrol, fewer arrests and jail admissions are occurring. Over time, fewer admissions will mean fewer inmates, on a daily basis.
2. Baby Boomers: No question that the general population is getting older. Over 75 million became Medicare eligible in 2011 and represents a much larger proportion of the citizenry than 30 years ago. While not many of us are locked up, we all know that an aging population is a less crime-prone population.
3. Judicial Behavior: As difficult as it may be to explain, a pervasive awareness exists in the courts as to the detrimental effects of delayed justice. While cases have become more complex, the time to trial/disposition has decreased, resulting in a shorter length of stay.
4. Public Weariness: In the 1990s and 2000s, American’s seemingly could not get enough of cable TV stories on crime and its consequences. While some producers still haven’t gotten the message, public priorities (if they ever were really there) have shifted from public safety to jobs and upside down mortgages. The result is a less shrill approach to the management of minor offenders, in particular.
5. Determinant Sentencing: For federal and state offenders, this product of the “decades of fear” had the result of prisoners occupying their bed longer and not wreaking havoc on Main Street. Across the board, offenders were locked up for a longer period of time. When the net is cast that broadly, there is no question that many habitual offenders were captured. The positive side of this public policy is that the habitual offenders are not in our neighborhoods creating havoc because we already had them in custody.
6. What Works? The cost of incarceration exceeds $25 billion per year in America. The crime rate continues to decline as we fall behind every developed economy in science and math. Clearly, the relationship between increasing incarceration rates and falling crime rates was askew. As locale after locale tested alternative sanctions, we have learned that a large percentage of addicted and mentally ill offenders are better served in the community. Diversion programs, whether philosophically or economically driven, are reducing the jail population.
Of course, we could be in the process of just becoming better people but the divisiveness in Washington and many state legislatures does not give me comfort that we have become fundamentally better people. If we have, then virtually all I have said above is moot.
I also think we should watch the Brits as they try to understand why a historically civil society would suddenly erupt into a lawless mob for no specific reason. Early returns suggest that frustration from sustained clueless leaders may have reached the tipping point. We should never underestimate the pent-up anger that a sustained down economy causes.
Many locally sensitive variables have to be considered, which makes forecasting much more of a leap of faith than a science. History would suggest that this is yet again a temporary correction and that with elections pending and a guarded optimism that the economy will recover, the nation will yet again face stratospheric demands.
I really don’t think so this time. The 70s revolution in America produced a strange combination of judicial intervention in the conditions of confinement, public safety fears, and an expansionist economy. Taken together, a market for a million more bedspaces resulted. Corporations, associations and careers were built on an annual increase in confinement. Barring another social revolution, I believe that the big growth era is over and what now remains is how that will impact decision makers and the folks that read this magazine.
A couple of factors could make my prediction completely irrelevant if not idiotic. One has little to do with growth and the other does. The non-growth factor that could sustain the demand for design, construction, equipment and supplies would be continued deterioration in the conditions of confinement such that the courts intervene more actively. However, I would not bet on this one for a decade.
The other, resulting from a combination of a weakened economy, would be a shifting of responsibilities for care and custody to local governments. Virtually every state is at least discussing models that de-populate state prisons and re-populate local jails under the banner of “community corrections.” Yet again, California is at the leading edge.
Most large jurisdictions in California have seen a decline in jail population over the last three years. This reduction, however, may be short lived as the state shifts a portion of the incarceration burden to the counties through the implementation of its realignment legislation. Preliminary estimates indicate that in San Diego County, for example, an additional 2,000inmates may require incarceration within the next year.
Therefore, while beds are empty now in this populous county, the fresh paint on empty cells will hardly have time to dry before being re-occupied by state inmates. This scene will likely be played out in many other large jurisdictions throughout the state.
Every correctional aficionado has known for some time that the federal courts would not permit the state system to remain operating at nearly 200 percent of capacity forever. The timing for the federal court to drop the shoe on crowding, and the General Assembly finally agreeing on a strategy to send more than 35,000 CDCR inmates home, is either strategic brilliance or an incredible stroke of good luck for the state. Understandably, many county supervisors have that deer-in-the-headlights expression.
Yes, the California economy has years of recovery ahead, and yes, implementing AB 109 and 117 will further exacerbate local coffers, but bedspaces are available to be filled even though the cost of doing so is undetermined. Since California always has been a trendsetter, the remainder of the colonies will watch the results of realignment while considering cost shifting policies of their own.
In particular, the design profession faces a reluctant correctional market for the next five years. However, long neglected repairs and maintenance work that is apparent in more than a third of the nation’s bedspaces will have to be addressed at some point. The shift to longer incarceration at the local level, euphemistically called community corrections, will also generate some needs for new or re-purposed bedspaces. This is hardly enough to support the talented design infrastructure that has developed over the last three decades.
For the diminished number of projects that will emerge over the next five years, many will be procured through known, but costly, methods. In the last issue, Correctional News July/Aug 2011, is a roundtable discussion from several of the thoroughbreds in the profession, who reported candidly on how these changes in the market and the procurement methods will impact their organizations and careers. It’s worth a read.
We’re not through talking about the pending changes in the demographics that will vary the budgets for state and local agencies, as well as private companies and individuals for the next decade. Stay tuned.