Alternative Sentencing Reduces Costs -- But What is the Impact on Violent Crime?

An article in today's Washington Post highlights the role that alternative sentencing options have been playing to keep low-level offenders out of prison and reduce prison costs for certain cash-strapped states. Obviously, this is a pertinent issue in Maryland now, with legislation that would have extended the sentences of violent offenders having died in both of the General Assembly's Judicial Proceedings Committees last spring. That legislation was estimated to cost the state of Maryland more than $200 million.

Two things strike me about this article. First, there is some scant mention of Maryland's "community-based" program for drug treatment and other alternative sentencing options -- and no mention of the state's use of diminition credits as a tool for reducing the overall prison population. Second, nowhere in the article is there any mention of the impact these programs are having on violent crime in their respective states.

One would have to surmise that states that are reducing the number of low-level offenders in their prison system through alternative sentencing options are consequently leaving more room in the prisons for violent, more dangerous offenders who need to be incarcerated longer, potentially leading to a reduction in recidivist violent crime.

Is this in fact the case for any of these states? It would be helpful to know this. But this article does not even broach the subject.

For what it's worth, here is what the article says about Maryland's program.

Maryland has one of the country's most advanced community-based corrections programs and has made significant investments in drug treatment programs, [Adam] Gelb [director of the Public Safety Performance Project for the Pew Center on the States], said.

Are these the same programs that both nonviolent and violent inmates alike routinely take advantage of to earn time off of their sentences and gain early release? The same programs that enable them to be released early, regardless of whether they have completed the programs are or otherwise determined to be a good risk for being released back into society?

It is probably worth noting that, when making the case for a reduction of his 12-year prison sentence for his knife attacks, Shawn Henderson's attorney told Judge Durke G. Thompson that her client had forsworn drinking and drugs. During his trial for the April 13, 2008, murder of Lindsay Harvey that he committed just two years after his release from prison, Henderson's attorneys told the court that their client was severely inebriated after drinking several glasses of gin the night that Lindsay was shot to death.

Here's something else worth noting. The Post article mentions how some states are reducing the number of people sent to prison for technical violations, such as missing appointments. You may remember from reading this Gazette article a while back that Shawn Henderson missed a scheduled appointment with his probation officer and committed one other violation of the terms of his probation in December 2007, four months before he killed Lindsay. His probation officer did not seek his arrest for those violations until the day after he was charged with Lindsay's murder.