Calculating the cost of incarceration

1. Calculating the cost of incarceration Expenditure trends and spending priorities for the Department of Correctional Services Chandré Gould 6 May 2011 ISS Seminar: Pretoria

2. Keeping it in perspective • In 2011/12 SA will spend R16,5 billion keeping 160 000 offenders in prison • Incarceration is expensive – and getting the policy right to ensure minimal but effective use of incarceration as a sentencing option and ensuring that DCS delivers the best service at the lowest cost is vital

3. Civil society intervention • Request by Chair of CS Portfolio Committee for more detailed analysis and input • Process funded by the OSF and involved ISS, NICRO and CSPRI and utilised skills of economist with experience in working with treasury

4. Overview • Offer an analysis of the DCS budget • Identify the drivers of cost in the DCS • The White Paper requires that the DCS rehabilitate prisoners. We will show the cost of rehabilitation programmes – were they to be rolled out nationally and be based on international ‘best-practice’ • Demonstrate that within the current budget and facilities provision of rehabilitation programmes as envisaged by the current policy is not possible • This means there is a need for us to re-think the way in which we use incarceration.

5. Basic facts about spending on Corrections • 2010/11 DCS budget was R15,2bn – 37% higher than 2007/8 • DCS budget will rise by a further 23% between current year and 2013/2014 • This is a 69% growth since 2007/8 • But this growth must be contextualised

6. Basic facts about spending on Corrections

7. Contextualising the growth in the DCS budget • If the DCS budget had grown at the same rate as the police budget it would be some R1,1bn higher than it is now, or R700 million larger – if one removed the cost of the 4 proposed new PPPs • DCS budget as a share of national budget is projected to fall from 2,1% in 2007/8 to 1,8% of national budget in 2013/14. • Not a bad thing, but just worth noting

8. Interpreting the budget Functional breakdown of the budget by programmes: • Administration: core administrative and financial support • Security: pays for the guarding of prisoners • Corrections: pays for the staff needed to develop sentence plans • Care: provides for the physical and psychological care of offenders, including purchasing food for them • Development: provides for training, recreation and other services for prisoners • Social Reintegration: manages the release of prisoners and the monitoring of parolees; and • Facilities, which provides for the physical infrastructure needed by DCS

9. Programme allocations • 34% of the budget each year is spent on Security • 26% is spent on Administration • 12% is spent on Facilities • 11% is spent on Care • 9% is spent on Corrections, and • 3% each on Development and Social Reintegration

11. Interpreting the budget Another, perhaps more useful way to breakdown the budget is by economic classification: • about 66% = personnel costs • 28% = goods and services (incl leases, property payments, medicines, food and outsourced services) • 7% on physical infrastructure (but this varies - between 5% and 11% between 2007/8 and 2013/14)

13. What drives costs in DCS? • Three factors driving costs in DCS: • Prisoner numbers • Range and quality of services DCS provides to prisoners (including accommodation, nutrition, medical treatment, safety and security and so on)Changes in characteristics of prisoners may change the costs e.g. ATDs require more administrative handling, more escorts to and from courts • Cost of services provided (fundamentally this relates to personnel costs)

14. What drives prisoner numbers? • Four variables: • Crime rate • Quality of policing and prosecution services • Laws and court practices regarding granting of bail • Sentencing regime • While parliament and other role players can have an influence over these, the influence of DCS over these variables is limited • So, while the number of prisoners is a key variable in determining whether its budget is adequate or not, this something that DCS has much control over

15. Prisoner numbers • Rapid growth in prisoner numbers between 1995 and 2003 • Since 2003 prisoner numbers have remained stable • Since 2006 the daily average prisoner population (including ATDs) has varied between 159 000 and 165 000

16. Cost drivers: prisoner numbers

17. Why are prisoner numbers stable? • Perhaps surprising if one considers the high rate of crime, and violent crime in particular • Also massive growth in police numbers - by 66 000 since 2003 • So, either fewer criminals making their way through the justice system OR they are receiving shorter sentences • Latter, not true (see the following graph)

18. Black line shows the average sentence length – which has risen from 4.4 to 7.3 years since 1995

19. This is a consequence of minimum sentencing legislation • So, DCS fortunate that the rest of the criminal justice sector is not functioning optimally • 15 year review by the Presidency found that the number of convictions in SA courts fell from 96 000 in 2006 to 75 000 on 2008 (see the following graph).

21. Same research found that the conviction rate for serious crimes committed between 2001 and 2006 varied between 20% of all murders reported to police and 2% of car thefts

22. SAPS ARREST TRENDS 2003 - 2010 • Total arrests increased by 24%. • Arrests for priority crimes increased by 9%

24. Implication for DCS The number of newly admitted prisoners has fallen by over 44% since 2004, so: • Number of prisoners has stabilised • Turnover of prisoners has reduced • Prisoners tend to stay in prison for much longer Were the CJS functioning optimally, DCS would be in serious crisis

25. What drives costs in DCS? • Personnel costs are another driver of costs in DCS • Personnel costs determined by: • Number of staff • Remuneration of staff

26. Personnel costs • DCS, like other government departments has little control over agreements reached in Public Services Bargaining Chamber • Rapid increases in average remuneration of civil servants in the past few years • 7-day week should have resulted in savings but there is no certainty that it is effective, practical or results in actual savings

27. How do we know the DCS budget is under pressure? • Vacant posts frozen after 2007 wage agreement resulting in 2% decline in staff numbers (from 41 000 in 2007/8 to 40 260 in September 2010) • Reduction in spending on a range of non-essential issues (e.g. fleet services, use of outside IT consultants, advertising etc) • This is not unreasonable – DCS should have done this anyway but WHY is the budget under pressure? • Not an increase in prisoner numbers • May be that there are insufficient funds to foot the increased salary bill, but the key question is whether DCS has improved or increased the range of services provided to prisoners?

28. Has DCS increased the quality or quantity of services to prisoners? • DCS committed to delivering services in terms of the White Paper • Has been an increase in sentence plans from 9836 in 2007/8 to 95 000 projected for 2013/14 (but 40 000 completed in 2010) • No substantial increase in literacy training projected (annual 4 500) • No significant increase in skills development programmes (6 800 a year)

29. Has DCS increased the quality or quantity of services to prisoners? • Also, no significant changes in staff complement – so broad commitments not been reflected in staffing allocations (see the next graph)

31. The same point can be made by looking at projected growth between different programmes. Those that grow the slowest are Development, Corrections and Social Reintegration

32. Services? • 2011 DCS budget shows that ‘Security’ will grow faster than Development, Corrections, Social Reintegration and Care • Also, consider that only prisoners with sentences of over 24 months qualify for sentence plans which represents a reduction of services since 2008 (amendment of the Correctional Services Act). • Impact of this decision  70% of those released from prison annually have not had sentence plans or access to services (programmes or counselling)

34. Consequence of this is that DCS acts as a revolving door for prisoners coming in, spending short periods of time in prison and then leaving - at a high administrative cost • So, we are not actually seeing an increase or improvement in services – thus the biggest driver of cost, since prisoner numbers have remained the stable is the cost of staff remuneration • This has driven DCS to the point where it cannot realistically plan and deliver high-quality rehabilitation interventions • Increases in prisoner numbers if the CJS becomes more effective will deepen the problem

35. Implementing the White Paper • So, lets try to establish what implementing the White Paper will cost • Based on international literature, effective rehabilitation programmes have several key features in common

36. Features of effective programmes • Community-based rather than prison-based • Intensive (at least 6 months long) • Focus on high risk individuals • Risk levels determined by sophisticated instruments • Cognitive behavioural techniques used • Matching of therapist and substance of programme to specific offenders • Offenders would be offers vocational training and job-enhancing opportunities • Would include intensive, mandatory after after care component • Include stringent M&E

37. Factors influencing cost • The number of prisoners who qualify to receive such interventions • The number of months over which the typical intervention will take place • The ratio of recipients of these interventions to the number of professionals providing the services (which, for ease of expression, we will call ‘class size’) • The proportion of the day that each ‘class’ will take up for the professional concerned, with the proviso that anything more than 40% a day will make it impossible for an individual professional to be involved in more than one ‘class’ at a time; and • The qualifications (and, therefore, cost) of the typical professional involved in the delivery of these services

38. Calculation • Possible to calculate: • How many ‘classes’ annually • Number of professionals involved • Cost of professionals • Number of prisoners receiving interventions:60 000 (based on interventions only to those sentenced to more than 24 months) • Intervention classes will last 6 months • Class size average at 10 • Professionals can only give one class a day

39. Estimated cost of rehabilitation

40. Other costs (not calculated) • Increased administrative capacity required (add 25%) • Development of risk assessment and predictive tools • Infrastructure costs • Additional resources These could double the costs presented in the previous table

41. Implications of the costing • If DCS were to deliver services to 60 000 prisoners, the least possible cost would be R1bn, i.e. a R1bn increase to the existing budget – which doesn’t sound unreasonable • But, are such programmes effective and practical AND is this the right policy approach? • Current challenges relate to housing all prisoners humanely and ensuring safety and security in prisons

42. Additional questions • Will or can these really reduce the amount of crime committed by prisoners after their release? • How certain can we be of that this will occur and that the reason for the decline will be the programmes the DCS offers rather than simply the amount of time prisoners spend in prison and the fact they’ve aged in the process? • Is it even possible to rehabilitate prisoners living in inhumane conditions? • Is it possible to find sufficient dedicated and qualified professionals to provide the interventions that DCS and the White Paper envisage? These are not easy questions to answer, so it is not clear that DCS ought really to prioritise a large-scale rehabilitative intervention.

43. Key issues • This highlights two issues: • Policy shifts are required in order to improve the ‘return on investment’ to society that results from incarceration of those who are convicted of crime • The policy shifts that are required involve all departments in the criminal justice system and require dramatic re-assessment of the focus of the DCS • Require a radical re-thinking of the role of incarceration in society

44. Recommendations • Policy revision, to include: • Is there value in passing custodial sentences of 24 months or less, given that this category of prisoner spends a relatively short time in prison, receives no services during that time, but probably costs the department a great deal in terms of administration – and makes up 70% of all releases annually. • Whether minimum sentencing legislation is appropriate and can achieve the objective of deterring crime. • Whether the DCS should be offering rehabilitation services, or whether it should prioritise raising the level of accommodation, security, nutrition and care to levels consistent with humane detention. • Whether to focus whatever rehabilitative resources are available on younger offenders, particularly those who are first-time offenders and those with substance abuse problems. • Whether ‘open prisons’ could serve the purpose of reducing overcrowding and easing re-entry into society at a lower cost than rehabilitation programmes can. • Establishing a system of post-release support for prisoners re-entering society and a community-based programme for those serving non-custodial sentences.

45. : +27 12 346 9500 :cgould@issafrica.org : www.issafrica.org