Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Criminal Law

: The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

PA: Jeffrey Beard proposes releasing short-term state prisoners to halfway houses

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

Prison head: Release short-term state inmates to halfway houses Tuesday, March 02, 2010 By Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette HARRISBURG -- The head of the state prison system today outlined steps that could be taken at little or no cost to free up as many as 2,000 prison beds statewide and save the state $200 million, the cost of a new prison. Current law prevents the Department of Corrections from sending newly jailed inmates -- even those with a "short sentence," meaning less than a year to serve -- to community correctional facilities or halfway houses, Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard told the Senate Appropriations Committee. All new inmates now must go to state prison for the first nine months of their sentence. Since more than 3,500 inmates with short sentences enter the prison system each year, they are a major driver of the state's prison-overcrowding problem...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on March 04, 2010 (boomark / email).