There is no question that violent criminals — particularly repeat offenders — are a danger to society. That is why state lawmakers recently unveiled their proposals for a more stringent parole system. Tougher consequences for violent acts are necessary.
Prompted by the nightmarish home invasion this past summer in Cheshire, Gov. M. Jodi Rell and state lawmakers have pondered and debated how best to make the state safer from violent criminals.
Connecticut isn’t the only state that releases violent criminals early. According to federal government statistics, violent offenders generally serve less than half of their sentence in confinement.
If violent criminals are required to serve their full sentences, it is logical that the state will ultimately need to construct more prisons, or at the very least, expand the 18 prisons it now operates.
The cost to house the state’s 19,438 inmates is about $1.67 million per day. If you do the math, that’s nearly $12 million a week, or about $608 million annually. It isn’t cheap.
While there is no question that Connecticut residents should be protected from hardened, violent criminals who commit unspeakable crimes, taxpayers will shell out more money to put away more criminals for longer periods of time.
If lawmakers meet this month– as expected — for a special session to discuss criminal reform matters, they also need to consider how to cut incarceration costs by examining how state funds can reduce the number of youngsters already heading into the prison pipeline and reduce recidivism.
More than a third of those incarcerated are reconvicted, according to the state Department of Correction Web site. The overall reincarceration rate is 22 percent. And it doesn’t take long for former inmates to get in trouble with the law after they are released from prison. The average number of days a former inmate is in the community prior to rearrest — that led to a new conviction — is 255. Notably, inmates released to a community program were out of prison the longest (343 days) and inmates released from prison with no community supervision averaged the shortest (238 days) amount of time prior to rearrest.
There is also data — to be discussed this week at the Governor’s Early Childhood Summit: Investing in the First 1,000 Days — that establishes the pipeline to prison is significantly influenced by a child’s early reading ability and academic success.
The summit, hosted by the governor’s Early Childhood Cabinet, will focus on the cabinet’s 18-month compilation of quantitative research, which concludes that it pays to invest in programs that boost academic performance of at-risk children during the first 1,000 days of their lives. In fact, such an investment significantly reduces the likelihood of the children committing a felony later in life.
The road to prison starts early. The cabinet will highlight research at the summit that establishes that youngsters experiencing academic failure by grade three are far more likely to experience later school failure, welfare dependence and incarceration as adults. The research shows that children who participate in a high-quality preschool, combined with regular home visits by a trained family resource specialist, are four times less likely to commit a felony by the time they’re 40.
For every $1 invested in a high-quality preschool program, economists have determined that taxpayers earn a return on investment of nearly $17 in the long run. That’s because a far greater number of children participating in a high-quality preschool program will graduate from high school, earn a significantly higher salary, and — more importantly — will be less likely to commit a crime.
Hopefully, lawmakers will realize that if they want to make the state safer, they must commit to investments that reduce the number of people who are in the pipeline heading to prison.
