State economists: corrections and public defense forecasts carry upside risk; youth custody beds steady near 380

The Office of Economic Analysis on Thursday presented its April forecasts for the Department of Corrections, the Oregon Youth Authority and the Public Defense Commission, telling the Public Safety Committee that adult custody and intake projections are expected to increase over the forecast horizon but carry an asymmetric risk of being higher than projected.

The forecasts matter because they feed the agencies' budget requests and the state's budget process, and a larger-than-expected rise in intakes or caseloads would increase costs for prison and juvenile facility capacity as well as for public defense, speakers said.

Michael Kennedy, with the Office of Economic Analysis, said the office issues forecasts each April and October and that the adult corrections and youth corrections forecasts project 10 years monthly, while the public defense forecast covers three biennia for budgeting and planning. "All three statutes that authorize us to or direct us to produce these forecasts also direct the three respective agencies to use these forecasts for budgeting and planning purposes," Kennedy said.

Mitchell Desaut, with the Office of Economic Analysis, described the corrections methodology as a demographic flow algorithm that models the monthly population as the previous month's population plus admissions minus releases, and then factors in law-change impacts. He said the current adult forecast expects intakes to return to pre-pandemic levels by about 2028 but at a slightly slower rate than in the October forecast.

"This is partly related to the public defense crisis," Desaut said, adding that the shortage of available defense attorneys has delayed cases and therefore suppressed intakes. He listed several risks to the corrections forecast, including future changes in prosecutorial or judicial practices and demographic shifts.

For youth corrections, the office said admissions and referrals to court have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels, and beds have averaged about 380 since early 2023, down from roughly 500 pre-pandemic. The April forecast for youth custody is relatively similar to October's, with a modest increase projected around 2028'29, the analysts said.

On public defense, Kennedy described a new caseload model that aims to forecast the universe of cases eligible for appointed counsel (the office's statutory directive) rather than only counting actual appointments. He explained the difference between the universe of eligibles and the subset of cases that currently receive attorneys because of appointment capacity. "In a perfect universe, all of those would get appointed an attorney, and the blue would actually be the green circle. But right now, there aren't enough attorneys to appoint to all of those eligibles," Kennedy said.

Kennedy and committee members also discussed data challenges. The OEA said it obtains filings and appointment coding from the Judicial Department's Odyssey system and is working to add appointment counts to its dataset; data cleanup accounted for some revisions compared with earlier forecasts, particularly probation-violation counts that were previously overstated.

Legislative Fiscal Office staff noted that the Public Defense Commission previously lacked a forecast for multiple biennia and that Senate Bill 337 moved forecasting responsibility to OEA; LFO staff emphasized that pricing the mandated caseload adjustment for PDC will be critical for the budget process.

Committee members questioned the assumptions behind the timing of projected increases and the extent to which demographic trends or policy changes could alter the forecasts. OEA officials repeatedly stressed that the forecasts are based on current law and practices and that the largest near-term uncertainty is the public defense attorney shortage, which suppresses intakes now but could lead to faster increases if resolved.

"So it's just that upside risk that we wanted to leave here with the committee ... because the consequences of that, obviously from a budget perspective, are fairly severe," Michael Kennedy said.

The hearing closed with staff noting that the Department of Justice will present at the next scheduled hearing and with no formal committee actions taken during the session.