"SUPERVISING REGION INCENTIVE ACT" S.B. 935 (S-1):
SUMMARY OF BILL
REPORTED FROM COMMITTEE
Senate Bill 935 (Substitute S-1 as reported)
Committee: Michigan Competitiveness
CONTENT
The bill would create the "Supervising Region Incentive Act" to do the following:
-- Require the Department of Corrections (DOC) to adopt a supervising region incentive program to be offered to field operations administrative regions that agreed to seek at least a 10% reduction in parole and probation revocations.
-- Create the "Supervising Region Incentive Fund" and allow the DOC to spend money in the Fund for incentives and assistance to regions implementing practices, procedures, and sanctions directed at parole and probation revocation reduction.
-- Provide that, to be eligible for funding, a region would have to enter into an agreement with the DOC to seek at least a 10% reduction in parole and probation revocations within an 18-month period by implementing the applicable practices, procedures, and sanctions under the Parole Sanction Certainty Act (proposed by Senate Bill 932) and other efforts to reduce parole and probation revocations.
-- Require the DOC to make 20% of an equal share of total incentive funds available in the Fund for each region, calculated by the total number of regions and the total amount of money in the Fund, available to a region that entered into an agreement with the DOC, to begin implementing those supervision practices.
-- Allow a region to receive incentive funding (except as provided for implementation) only if it achieved at least a 10% reduction in parole and probation revocations within an 18-month period.
-- Allow a region to receive additional funding if, after three years, it achieved an additional reduction of at least 10% in parole and probation revocations within a one-year period.
-- Allow a region to use incentive funding only for specified purposes.
-- Require the DOC to report annually to the Senate and House Appropriations Subcommittees on Corrections and to the Senate and House Fiscal Agencies regarding regions' participation in the program and the amount of avoided costs.
The bill is tie-barred to Senate Bill 932, which would create the "Parole Sanction Certainty Act" to require the DOC to adopt a system of sanctions for violations of conditions of parole sanction certainty supervision.
Legislative Analyst: Suzanne Lowe
FISCAL IMPACT
The bill would have an indeterminate fiscal
impact on the State and no fiscal impact on local government. It would target
probation and parole revocations both for technical violations and for new
offenses. The Department of Corrections supervises approximately 63,000
probationers and parolees each year. From 2012 to 2014, the State averaged
6,120 combined probation and parole revocations that led to imprisonment per
year. It is not known if or by
how much the incentives in the bill would encourage supervising regions to reduce revocations.
For any decrease in prison intakes, in the short term, the marginal savings to State government would be approximately $3,764 per prisoner per year. In the long term, if the decreased intake of prisoners reduced the total prisoner population enough to allow the Department of Corrections to close a housing unit or an entire facility, the marginal savings to State government would be approximately $34,550 per prisoner per year. For comparison, it costs the State approximately $3,024 per year to supervise a person on probation and $5,260 to supervise a person on parole.
The amount appropriated for incentives would be at the discretion of the Legislature. The Senate-passed FY 2016-17 Corrections budget proposes $3.0 million for the incentives.
Date Completed: 5-26-16 Fiscal Analyst: Ryan Bergan
This analysis was prepared by nonpartisan Senate staff for use by the Senate in its deliberations and does not constitute an official statement of legislative intent.