Fiscal Highlights - November 2016
Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI): Status Report -
Gary R. Syphus ( PDF) During the 2015 General Session, the Legislature passed House Bill 348 commonly referred to as the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), which aims to address recidivism in the adult correctional system. This change was in large part based on the review of Utah criminal justice data by Pew Charitable Trusts working with CCJJ and other state agencies. The Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ), who is directly overseeing JRI's implementation, recently gave a status report on the implementation of JRI to various committees including the Executive Offices and Criminal Justice Appropriations Subcommittee and the Executive Appropriations Committee. In addition to reforms, the Legislature initially appropriated about $14 million to implement the initiative. CCJJ reported on various aspects of implementation, success, deficiencies, and more. The full report can be found here. As background, PEW and CCJJ's review found that there had been "an 18 percent increase in Utah's prison population in the past decade." CCJJ estimated that without action, the state would need to house an additional 2,700 inmates by 2034. CCJJ reported that "almost half (46%) of Utah's inmates who are released from state prisons return within three years." The total $14 million appropriation (of which about half, or $7 million of total funding was for grants to be passed through to counties to help carry out the initiative) was distributed as follows (further funding detail can be found here on pp. 7-8):
While there is much more information within the report, CCJJ reports that the key takeaways are that:
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When asked about why fewer clients were served overall while additional state funding was appropriated for treatment, counties attributed it to a few factors. The main factors were (1) the JRI population is more costly to serve as their cases of substance abuse and mental health are typically more serious and thus more costly on average and (2) an outside factor of the federal government reducing a grant that serves some of this population and that net funding (state + federal) is lower than what it was prior to JRI. This factor combined with the fact that the estimated unmet treatment need was already about $16.4 million exacerbates the issues of lower funding available for treatment than was originally estimated. However the Legislature passed House Bill 437, "Health Care Revisions" in order to help fund much of this estimated unmet need that is conditional upon a federal waiver. It is noted that the federal government has not yet made a decision whether to approve the proposal and the Department of Health reported that they will likely not get a decision until April 2017 at the earliest.Reports/Archive | Budget Process | Office Background | Who's Who | Organization Chart
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