Reaching economic tipping points for tough-on-crime movements
Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast has been doing a great job highlighting here and here how tight budgets and the high costs of mass incarceration in Texas are forcing state legislators to reconsider “tough on crime” policies. And a helpful reader sent me this remarkable article detailing how tight budget are impacting prosecutions in Ashtabula, Ohio:
Budget problems and layoffs have so crippled the Ashtabula County justice system that dozens of crimes committed at the Lake Erie Correctional Institution in Conneaut over the last three years, including felony assaults and drug offenses, have not been prosecuted….
Finances are so tight that people who call the office of Ashtabula County Prosecutor Thomas Sartini are greeted by this recording: “Due to budget restrictions, we are unable to answer phone calls between the hours of 12 and 4:30. Please leave a message and we will respond as soon as personnel are available.”
I have blogged a lot about how states are really struggling to pay the bills coming due from two decades of tough-on-crime rhetoric and the resulting huge prison populations. Just a few posts on this topic are linked below: