FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, January 23, 2012
Contact: Alessandra Soler Meetze, ACLU of Arizona, at 602-773-6006 (office) or 602-301-3705 (cell)
PHOENIX – Despite efforts by states across the country to implement policy reforms to cut crime rates and incarceration costs, members of the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee today will hear a series of ‘tough on crime’ measures that will increase prison sentences for certain crimes and place the financial burden on taxpayers. This latest move by Arizona lawmakers is part of a disturbing trend at the Arizona Capitol to drive up incarceration rates and costs and ignore the potential of better alternatives.
“The prison population in Arizona is getting smaller, as it is in many other states,” said ACLU of Arizona Public Policy Director Anjali Abraham. “Now is not the time to enact new laws to continue warehousing prisoners at substantial expense to the taxpayers of our state. States like Mississippi and Texas have successfully implemented lower-cost rehabilitation programs that save money and actually help reduce the number of non-violent and low-level offenders who end up behind bars. For some reason, Arizona’s lawmakers continue to push for failed, extremely expensive policies that ultimately burden taxpayers who want safe communities.”
Compounding this problem is the Arizona Legislature’s willingness to hear bills that will increase incarceration rates and costs while refusing to even consider sensible sentencing reform bills. At 2 p.m. today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hear several bills that will further toughen penalties for a wide series of crimes. Read the bills. And while supporters claim that such bills will not add to the state’s general fund expenses, higher incarceration rates undeniably come with an enormous price tag. The ACLU of Arizona expects to see more of these bills throughout this legislative session.
The need to reform Arizona’s bloated, inefficient and unjust prison system is long overdue. Arizona has the sixth highest rate of incarceration in the nation1, and the combination of severe budget cuts and poorly managed facilities has led to systemic failures in the prison management system. The state’s prison suicide rate is more than double the national average, and the ACLU of Arizona has documented hundreds of complaints from inmates over the past year who are treated with brutality and deprived of their basic rights to receive adequate medical and mental health treatment.
“Arizona's long history of being 'tough on crime’ has actually done more harm than good,” added Abraham. “It has led to over-criminalization, increasingly draconian sentencing and parole regimes, and rapid prison expansion – all of which have given our state the dubious distinction of having one of the highest incarceration rates in the country. Lawmakers need to seriously consider reforms that are both politically and fiscally viable and that will better protect our communities.”
Despite the steady growth of the prison population over the past few decades, the state has started to see a decrease in recent years. According to news reports, the state’s prison population has fallen 1.6 percent as of October 31, 2011, and there are 1,666 empty prison beds across the state – a figure pulled from November 2011. Despite this decrease in the prison population, Governor Jan Brewer recently released a budget proposal that set aside $60 million for new prison construction, including a $17.9 million in fiscal 2014 to pay for a privately-run prison to house medium-security prisoners. In addition, the heads of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees have vowed to refuse to hear any sentencing reform bills that offer alternatives to incarcerating low-level and non-violent offenders.
Today’s Senate Judiciary Hearing will begin at 2 p.m. in Senate Hearing Room 1. Read the Senate Judiciary Committee agenda and for more information about the various bills.
1Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf Arizona is 6th (2009 & 2010)
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