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Advocates tell commission Massachusetts spends more on corrections even as population falls
Summary
Prisoners Legal Services told the special commission that inmate counts have fallen substantially while staffing and facility costs have risen; advocates blamed overclassification, expanded restrictive housing and underused minimum-security and prerelease capacity for higher costs.
Prisoners Legal Services (PLS) told the Special Commission on Correctional Consolidation and Collaboration that Massachusetts has seen a sharp drop in its incarcerated population while per-person correctional spending has risen.
"The count is down by somewhere between 25 to 30% over the past couple years," said Dave Greenie, executive director of Prisoners Legal Services, adding that longer-range data show declines closer to 48 percent. But he said the state's corrections spending and staffing levels have not fallen in parallel and in some places have increased.
Greenie urged the commission to focus on operational drivers of cost, not only…
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