80 cents an hour
Angela Carleno, 37, delivers papers to her desk at the customer service department in the Arizona Correctional Industries offices in west Phoenix. Carleno, imprisoned for a drug conviction, makes 80 cents an hour. Of her job, she says: “It’s been a blessing. I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been here.”

Legislation pushed by a Republican lawmaker with the backing of the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC) will expand a transition program helping prepare a group of inmates re-enter the free world.
The expanded program will be funded by 5 percent of prisoners’ wages, generating an estimated $650,000 a year and enabling 650 inmates to participate, according to ADOC.
But a critic of the bill, H2298, described some provisions as either unconstitutional or illegal.
One senator remarked that the way the program is funded is “unfair,” equating the move to a kind of welfare project, where everybody foots the bill but only a few can actually join.
Arizona’s prisons hold some 36,000 inmates. Those who work are paid anywhere between 10 cents and $7.86 an hour, ADOC staff said. To date, about 25,000 are working.
Supporters of the measure countered that the funding mechanism is similar to a tax. Not everybody benefits from services that he or she helps fund through taxes. But they pay taxes anyway.
The benefits to society are numerous, they added. Every prisoner who is successfully reintegrated into society means less expense to the state — and therefore to the taxpayer — not to mention fewer victims, as the rate of recidivism is reduced.
Critic: Bill leaves out prisoners who need it most
But this is precisely why one prison advocate, Donna Hamm, opposes the bill — because it reaches out to too few people and does not target those who need it most.
“I think they have targeted the easy (ones), the people who are more than likely to transition successfully anyway so that they can ratchet up statistics which (would) show that they are ‘successful’,” said Hamm. She represents the Tempe-based Middle Ground Prison Reform.
She said the bill leaves out inmates who “most need anger management, job assistance, housing assistance, parenting skills and training” and these are the prisoners who are convicted of more serious crimes.
The bottom line is that the bill “provides an obscene amount” of money to ADOC for a program that targets few people.
She agrees, however, that it is the Corrections director who sets the wage scale, and she may even decide not to pay any wages at all.
“But once the wages are earned by the prisoner, then he has a property interest, an ownership so to speak, in those wages, and they cannot be forfeited without due, just compensation and clearly a program that requires prisoners to pay for programs that he will never ever be eligible for or benefit by is not just compensation,” she said.
ADOC officers countered that the program will cost a substantial amount of money and that the projected number of people eligible for it is about five times the current number of enrollees.
Currently, some 120 inmates are enrolled in the Transitions Program; ADOC allocated $185,000 for it last year.
“You have to consider, we are going to have a lot more participants,” said Katie Decker, ADOC spokesperson.
Referring to the idea of expanding the program to include more people, she said: “That is a good point and we would like to see this program potentially expand as well. We want to be very careful and very judicious about who is eligible for this program. We always want to make sure that there is no threat to the public.”
“If we need to broaden it next year and it is still working and proving to be working, that is something we are willing to evaluate at that time because you are right, if it is something that is this good, who’s to say that there aren’t other areas that we can tap into,” she added.
Frees bed space
The program, in fact, hits two birds with one stone, so to speak, according to Paul Boyer of ADOC. He testified in support of the bill in the Senate Appropriations Committee, where it was approved by a vote of 7-2 on April 3.
It frees up bed space inside prisons, and thereby helps, to a certain degree, relieve staffing issues.
Boyer emphasized they would never get it through the Legislature had the bill been written the way Hamm had wanted it.
It “wasn’t practical,” he said.
Rep. Bill Konopnicki, R-5, in an e-mail to the Arizona Capitol Times, said, “Initially the department had included more into the program but due to negotiations with various stakeholders, (we) had to pare down the number of inmates who could potentially be eligible.”
“In addition, the eligibility criteria already included in the current transition program is very stringent so that automatically makes it a self selecting group based on behavior. Quite often in the prison system there are many ways to punish an inmate but not enough incentives to act appropriately. This bill, if passed, would give inmates an incentive to be model citizens within the prison system,” said Konopnicki, the bill’s sponsor.
Boyer said the county attorney had an issue with expanding beyond what is currently allowed to be eligible so the negotiations settled on one overriding criterion — that inmates be “non-violent.”
One obvious reason for this limitation is to make sure that communities are safe as inmates rejoin them, he said.
“If it was practical to get it through, we looked into that, but it just wasn’t practical. I couldn’t have gotten it through the Legislature, how Ms. Hamm had intended it,” Boyer said.
Backers of the bill would have to convince senators that the bill is sound.
During a recent caucus, Sen. Chuck Gray, R-19, echoed Hamm’s objections as far as shifting the burden of funding the transition program to all prisoners.
“This is kind of the welfare thing, where all of the prisoners pay for a program that only few of the prisoners are going to abide by. It’s not really fair,” he said.
“It’s just like the outside world, I guess,” he added, eliciting laughter from colleagues.
Sen. Robert Blendu, R-12, was concerned that a person who is earning 25 cents an hour and is being required to give up 5 percent of his earnings would simply fold up his hands and say, “You know what, I’m not doing anything. I’ll just sit here.’
“Good behavior ought to be rewarded is my point and if they want to work and earn some money, they should not be penalized for that,” he said.
In fact, two senators, including Blendu, successfully offered amendments on the floor on April 17, one of them addressing a contentious portion of the bill. That same day, senators in a committee of the whole session approved the measure. It now goes to the full Senate for a third reading. Once passed, it goes back to the House where Konopnicki can either concur or refuse to accept the changes made to it.
State laws require the ADOC director to establish a transition program funded by contributions from the income of eligible inmates.
Some inmates not eligible
Eligible inmates include those convicted of a drug offense, those free of unresolved detainers, and those who agree to provide information in gauging the effectiveness of the program.
Sexual offenders, arsonists and those convicted for violent crimes are excluded.
Eligible inmates are allowed out of prison three months earlier than their actual release date.
State laws also created the Community Accountability Pilot Program or CAPP, which is designed to lower the rate of recidivism through intensive monitoring and treatment services.
In 2005, the ADOC reported that inmates who participated in work and rehabilitation programs had a lower rate of recidivism. The survey covered only two years after their release.
Some 2,171 fewer inmates were recommitted within two years as a result of program participation, according to ADOC.
The bill removes the requirement that 8 percent of wages of prisoners convicted of a drug offense be used exclusively to fund the transition office, mandating instead that 5 percent of all prisoners’ wages — except those convicted of DUI — be used to fund the transition office.
It modifies the eligibility requirements of those who can take part in it, so an inmate must be classified by ADOC as “low risk” and up to date with restitution payments.
The inmate must also be free of any felony detainers — instead of unresolved detainers. Those convicted of violent crimes are excluded from the program.
It states that the inmate may be released only after his or her victim has been notified and the victim does not object.
The bill also establishes the Teaching Offenders to Live Program (TOLP) as a component of CAPP. The TOLP, a five-week course on substance abuse, anger management, among others, is offered to prisoners whose community supervision has been revoked for one reason or another.
“The vast of majority of the inmate participation would never qualify or be eligible for the programming that they are paying for,” Hamm said.
‘Unconstitutional power’
Referring to the power given to a victim to object to a prisoner’s early release, she said:
“That in essence is an unconstitutional power given to victims that is not appropriate in our system of law. We don’t object — I want to make it sure you understand — to victim input or for the opportunity to be heard but clearly it’s unconstitutional for a victim to be the decision maker on any final decision that has to do with an offender.”
ADOC spokesperson Katie Decker told the Arizona Capitol Times that this issue will be addressed by an amendment on the floor.
“Now we will be notifying the victim of this. However, they will not have the ability to object to it,” she said. Konopnicki confirmed this.
The Blendu amendment directly addressed the issue. It deleted the provision that an inmate be released only if a victim does not object to the inmate’s early release.
Another amendment by Sen. Bob Burns, R-9, removed a provision of the bill that mandates that inmates be provided with services designed to lower recidivism rates. Instead, it retained the current statutory language, which is permissive and uses the word “may” instead of “shall.”
Boyer said: “Honestly we just want some more time with these folks that are low-risk and non-violent that have fulfilled all the eligibility requirements… just to give them the treatment (and) the skills that they need that are evidenced-based so that they don’t re-offend. Everyone ends up paying when they re-offend. The state ends up paying more money. There is a new victim probably. The community (loses) because there is no tax-paying citizen and the inmates ultimately end up paying because they go back to prison.”
The bill has found support in another prison advocate — Caroline Isaacs, program director of American Friends Service Committee.
The committee is an international non-profit human rights organization founded along Quaker beliefs.
During a Senate committee hearing, Isaacs asked legislators to consider more measures similar to H2298.
The reason: To avoid a prison population explosion that could potentially bankrupt the state.
“Arizona already has the ninth highest incarceration rate in the country. A report released this year by the Pew Charitable Trusts predicts that Arizona’s prison population will increase by more than 60 percent over the next decade. That’s one new prisoner for every three that are currently in the system. The reason for this dire prediction: Arizona’s sentencing laws are inflexible and overly harsh,” Isaacs said.
Inmate population grows by 100 a month
State projections pegged the inmate population growth at 100 per month or 1,200 per year, resulting in a bed shortfall of around 3,000 by the end of this year. About the same number, however, are expected to be added the next year.
Isaacs said the state is spending a huge chunk of its revenues on incarceration. The ADOC gets about $861 million this year.
“Our spending on prisons has already far surpassed what we invest in the Department of Economic Security, which provides assistance to needy families, the disabled, and the elderly. The growth of our spending on prisons is far outpacing the growth of our investment in higher education in this state,” Isaacs said.
She also said that the prisons are not exactly filled with violent criminals.
Here are some of the statistics she offered during the hearing:
• Violent offenders represent less than half of the prison population — just 40 percent. Of those, only 8 percent are serving time for homicide, and only 5 percent for sexual assault.
• The vast majority are in jail for drug-related crimes (19 percent) and property crimes (27 percent).
“Did you know that a full 49 percent of new admissions to ADOC are due to nothing more than technical violations of probation or parole, not even for commission of new crimes≠” Isaacs said.
Public safety highest goal
“We all can agree that our highest goal is to increase public safety. That means preventing crime from occurring. If that is our measure of success, then incarceration is sadly ineffective,” she said, pointing out that ADOC reported in 2005 that 40.7 percent of released prisoners returned within three years.
She citied two studies that showed that incarceration may not be the best tool to combat crime.
One of them, by the Vera Institute of Justice, looked into the available body of research on the relationship between crime and imprisonment and stated that the impact of a high incarceration rate is limited.
“A 10 percent increase in incarceration is associated with a 2 percent to 4 percent drop in crime. Moreover, analysts agree that continued growth in incarceration will prevent considerably fewer, if any, crimes than past increases did and will cost taxpayers substantially more,” the study’s executive summary said.
The paper also said that an increase in the number of policemen per capita, a reduction in employment, and increases in wage rates as well as education have been shown to be associated with lower crime rates.
Yet one study also showed that mass incarceration seems to have made streets safer. In a review of the book “Punishment and Inequality in America,” Jason deParle wrote in the New York Review of Books:
“The vast increase in the prison and jail population from about 380,000 in 1975 to 2.2 million today overlaps with equally stunning declines in crime. The homicide rate in the 1990s fell by 43 percent. Many critics of incarceration argue (a bit too quickly) that crime would have fallen without the prison boom. Perhaps. Still the value of safer neighborhoods is immediate, while the costs of excessive imprisonment are theoretical and vague.”
“H2298 is a tiny, modest step in the right direction,” Isaacs said. “If we claim to be fiscal conservatives, why wouldn’t we work to find ways to hold people accountable that do not bankrupt our state budget≠ If we are concerned about public safety, why wouldn’t we support interventions that are more effective at reducing crime≠ If we want to do the right thing by Arizona’s communities, we should support not only this bill, but many more like it.”