1.This Act may be cited as the
Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of
2009
.
2.Congress finds the following:
(1)A total of
2,200,000 American adults are incarcerated in State and local prisons and
jails, a rate of about 1 out of every 100 adults.
(2)State spending on
corrections has increased over the last 20 years from approximately
$12,600,000,000 in 1988 to more than $52,000,000,000 in 2008. According to
Public Safety, Public Spending: Forecasting America’s Prison Population
2007–2011
, State and Federal prison populations are expected to
increase by 192,000 over that 5-year period, at an additional cost of
$27,500,000,000.
(3)Between 2000 and
2008, jail populations increased from approximately 621,000 to 785,000 inmates.
The 3,300 jails nationwide process approximately 13,500,000 inmates each year,
4,000,000 of whom are repeat offenders.
(4)The number of
persons on probation and parole in State correctional systems has been
increasing. Approximately 5,000,000 Americans, or 1 out of every 45 adults, are
on probation or parole, an increase of nearly 300 percent since 1980.
(5)Policymakers have
insufficient access to detailed, data-driven explanations about changes in
crime, arrest, conviction, and prison and jail population trends.
(6)In the face of
ever-increasing correctional costs, with bipartisan leadership, governors and
legislative leaders in Texas, Kansas, Rhode Island, Vermont, and other States
around the country have initiated data-driven criminal justice reinvestment
strategies that increase public safety, hold offenders accountable, and control
corrections spending.
3.
(a)The
purpose of this Act is to provide grants for criminal justice reinvestment
strategies.
(b)Criminal justice
reinvestmentIn this Act, the term criminal justice
reinvestment refers to a data-driven program that—
(1)analyzes criminal
justice trends to understand what factors are driving the growth in prison and
jail populations;
(2)develops and
implements policy options to manage the growth in corrections populations and
increase the effectiveness of current spending and investment to increase
public safety and improve individual and system accountability; and
(3)measures the
impact of the policy changes and reinvestment resources and holds policymakers
accountable for projected results.
4.Public safety
performance grants to implement criminal justice reinvestment
strategies
(a)Phase 1—Data
analysis and policy development grants
(1)The Attorney General may make grants to a State, unit of
local government, territory, or Indian tribe (referred to in this Act as an
eligible entity
) to analyze and improve the cost-effectiveness
of State and local spending on prisons, jails, and community corrections
(referred to in this Act as Phase 1 grants
).
(2)The
purposes of the Phase 1 grants shall be for an eligible entity—
(A)to conduct a
comprehensive analysis of criminal justice data, including crime and arrest
rates, conviction rates, pretrial and reentry services, and probation, parole,
prison and jail populations;
(B)to evaluate
relevant criminal justice policies and the cost-effectiveness of current
spending on corrections and community corrections; and
(C)to develop
data-driven policy options that can increase public safety and improve offender
accountability.
(3)The
comprehensive analysis, evaluation, and policy development required by
paragraph (2) shall include—
(A)an analysis of
reported crime and arrest data;
(B)an analysis of
felony conviction data to understand the percent of offenders who are sentenced
to prison or jail for particular offenses;
(C)an analysis of
prison or jail admission and length-of-stay data over a 3- to 5-year time
period to determine which cohorts of offenders account for the growth of the
population;
(D)an analysis of
probation and parole data to determine which offenders are violating the
conditions of supervision and being revoked to prison or jail;
(E)an analysis of the
current capacity and quality of crime prevention and crime-fighting programs,
including institutional and community-based risk-reduction programs such as
drug treatment, mental health, education, job training, housing, and other
human services to divert individuals from prisons or jails and to reduce
recidivism among offenders on community supervision;
(F)consultation with
criminal justice stakeholders, including State corrections departments,
community corrections agencies, local jail systems, and relevant governmental
agencies and nonprofit organizations;
(G)an analysis of
criminal justice policies and expenditures, including the cost-effectiveness of
current spending on corrections and community corrections, to understand how
the existing system accounts for criminal justice trends;
(H)the development of
a prison or jail population projection using a simulation model based on
collected data to test the impact of various policy changes; and
(I)the development of
practical, data-driven policy options that can increase public safety, improve
offender accountability, reduce recidivism, and manage the growth of spending
on corrections in the relevant criminal justice system.
(4)To
be eligible to receive a grant under this subsection, an eligible entity shall
submit to the Attorney General an application, in such form and manner and at
such time as specified by the Attorney General that includes a proposal that
describes how the grant will fulfill the objectives required by paragraph
(2).
(5)The
Attorney General, in awarding funds under this subsection, shall give priority
to eligible entities that—
(A)demonstrate a
commitment from the chief executive officer, legislative body, judiciary, law
enforcement officials, correctional agencies and prosecutors of the eligible
entity to work together in a collaborative bipartisan approach to analyze the
data and develop criminal justice policy options;
(B)establish or
designate a multibranch, bipartisan, intergovernmental, interagency task force
of elected and appointed officials to address the criminal justice and public
safety challenges facing the jurisdiction;
(C)demonstrate access
to data from across the criminal justice system, including crime and arrest,
court and conviction, jail, prison, community corrections data, and standards
for analysis;
(D)identify agency or
consultant capacity to objectively analyze data, utilize simulation models for
prison or jail population projections, and develop concise written reports and
policy options for policymakers to review; or
(E)demonstrate that
the projected growth over a 10-year period is expected to exceed current
corrections capacity.
(6)The analysis, evaluation, and policy development required
for a grant under this subsection shall be completed not later than 12 months
after the receipt of funding for the grant unless granted an extension of time
by the Attorney General.
(b)Phase
2—Implementation grants
(1)The Attorney General may make grants to eligible entities
to implement policies and programs designed to help jurisdictions manage the
growth in spending on corrections and increase public safety (referred to in
this Act as Phase 2 grants
).
(2)The
purposes of the Phase 2 grants shall be for an eligible entity to—
(A)fund programs
identified by prior data analysis and policy development that provide training
and technical assistance, support the delivery of risk-reduction programs, or
otherwise enhance public safety and improve offender accountability by
strengthening the criminal justice system;
(B)reinvest averted
prison or jail costs into programs that enhance public safety by strengthening
the criminal justice system or high-risk communities and individuals;
and
(C)measure
performance of policies and programs enacted or established in subparagraphs
(A) and (B).
(3)The
programs described by paragraphs (2)(A) and (2)(B) shall—
(A)provide training
and technical assistance including—
(i)training of
corrections and community corrections, judicial, substance abuse or mental
healthstaff and other key staff on evidence-based practices for reducing
recidivism; or
(ii)training and
technical assistance to assist jurisdictions in implementing and validating new
risk and needs assessment tools; or technical assistance to implement
evidence-based policies in corrections or community corrections
agencies;
(B)establish
risk-reduction programs including—
(i)substance abuse or
mental health treatment;
(ii)education or job
training;
(iii)job placement,
development, and creation;
(iv)intermediate
sanction programs and facilities, including community-based reentry programs,
day reporting centers and electronic monitoring; or
(v)supportive housing
programs;
(C)reduce the number
of rearrests, reconvictions, and revocations of people currently on probation
and parole and increase the number of successful completions of probation and
parole;
(D)establish policies
and practices that will avert growth in the prison and jail population and, as
a result, avert the need to appropriate funds for the construction or operation
of a new prison and jail facilities; or
(E)establish
comparable programs that enhance public safety by strengthening the criminal
justice system.
(4)The performance measures described by paragraph
(2)(C) shall track key criminal justice trends across agencies and departments
to measure the impact of the programs described in paragraph (3), and include
the following measurements where applicable:
(A)Reduction in
rearrest, reconviction, and revocations of people currently on probation and
parole.
(B)Increases in the
number of successful completions of probation and parole.
(C)General crime
trends.
(D)Prison and jail
populations.
(E)Number of program
and treatment slots added to reduce recidivism.
(5)To
be eligible to receive a grant under this subsection, an eligible entity shall
submit to the Attorney General an application, in such form and manner and at
such time as specified by the Attorney General that includes a proposal that
describes how the grant will fulfill the objectives required by paragraph
(2).
(6)Priority
consideration shall be given to applications under this subsection that
demonstrate that—
(A)the proposed
programs will improve public safety and improve individual and system
accountability while reducing or maintaining criminal justice growth through
policies which ensure that—
(i)violent offenders
are incarcerated;
(ii)nonviolent
offenders who pose a minimal risk of harm to the community are supervised
through effective probation and parole systems and provided with effective
risk-reduction programs; and
(iii)effective
diversion and reentry programs are integrated into a new overall criminal
reinvestment strategy;
(B)the proposed
programs will have a significant impact on the geographic areas identified by
the analysis as having disproportionate numbers of people returning from prison
or jail; and
(C)data analysis
through a Phase 1 grant or similar work has been completed.
(c)The Attorney General shall report to the Committees on the
Judiciary of the Senate and the House of Representatives on November 1 of each
year concerning the development and implementation of grants under this section
and strategies developed, which shall include information concerning—
(1)the number and
identity of the grantees who have received analyses and program development
grants;
(2)the progress of
grantees in conducting analyses and program development;
(3)the number and
identity of the grantees receiving implementation grants;
(4)the progress of
grantees in implementing criminal justice reinvestment strategies; and
(5)the performance of
entities implementing criminal justice reinvestment strategies, including
relevant data on—
(A)the reduction, if
any, in the number of rearrests, reconvictions, and revocations of people
currently on probation and parole;
(B)the increase, if
any, in the number of successful completions of probation and parole;
(C)the reduction, if
any, in the growth of the prison and jail population;
(D)the portion of
averted costs that has been or will be reinvested and used to target high-risk
communities and individuals to reduce the rate of rearrest, reconviction, and
revocation to increase public safety; and
(E)the reduction, if
any, in rearrest rates by people under the supervision of the criminal justice
system.
(d)The Attorney General shall establish an information
clearinghouse for data collected and for best practices developed by eligible
grantees developed in carrying out grants under this section.
(e)Applications
for grants shall be considered on a rolling basis and be responded to in a
timely fashion in order to provide assistance to policymakers facing various
budget timelines.
(f)Authorization of
appropriationsThere are authorized to be appropriated
$35,000,000 to carry out this section for each of the fiscal years 2010 through
2014.
1.This Act may be cited as the
Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of
2010
.
2.Congress finds the following:
(1)A total of 2,200,000
American adults are incarcerated in State and local prisons and jails, a rate
of about 1 out of every 100 adults.
(2)State spending on
corrections has increased over the last 20 years from approximately
$12,600,000,000 in 1988 to more than $52,000,000,000 in 2008. According to
Public Safety, Public Spending: Forecasting America’s Prison Population
2007–2011
, State and Federal prison populations are expected to
increase by 192,000 over that 5-year period, at an additional cost of
$27,500,000,000.
(3)Between 2000 and 2008,
jail populations increased from approximately 621,000 to 785,000 inmates. The
3,300 jails nationwide process approximately 13,500,000 inmates each year,
4,000,000 of whom are repeat offenders.
(4)The number of persons on
probation and parole in State correctional systems has been increasing.
Approximately 5,000,000 Americans, or 1 out of every 45 adults, are on
probation or parole, an increase of nearly 300 percent since 1980.
(5)Many policymakers have
insufficient access to detailed, data-driven explanations for changes to crime,
arrest, conviction, and prison and jail population trends.
(6)In the face of
ever-increasing correctional costs, with bipartisan leadership, governors and
legislative leaders in Texas, Kansas, Rhode Island, Vermont, and other States
around the country have implemented data-driven criminal justice reinvestment
strategies that increase public safety, hold offenders accountable, and control
corrections spending.
3.
(a)The
purpose of this Act is to provide grants for criminal justice reinvestment
strategies.
(b)Criminal justice
reinvestmentIn this Act, the term criminal justice
reinvestment refers to a data-driven approach that—
(1)analyzes criminal justice
trends to understand what factors are driving the growth in prison and jail
populations;
(2)develops and implements
policy options to control growth in corrections populations and increase the
effectiveness of current spending and investment to increase public safety and
improve individual and system accountability; and
(3)measures the impact of
the policy changes and reinvestment resources and holds policymakers
accountable for projected results.
4.Public safety
performance grants to implement criminal justice reinvestment
strategies
(a)Phase 1—Data analysis
and policy development grants
(1)The Attorney General may make grants to a State, unit of
local government, territory, or Indian tribe (referred to in this Act as an
eligible entity
) to analyze and improve the cost-effectiveness
of State and local spending on prisons, jails, and community corrections
(referred to in this Act as Phase 1 grants
).
(2)The
purposes of the Phase 1 grants shall be for an eligible entity—
(A)to conduct a
comprehensive analysis of criminal justice data, including crime and arrest
rates, conviction rates, pretrial and reentry services, and probation, parole,
prison and jail populations;
(B)to evaluate relevant
criminal justice policies and the cost-effectiveness of current spending on
corrections and community corrections; and
(C)to develop data-driven
policy options that can increase public safety and improve offender
accountability.
(3)The
comprehensive analysis, evaluation, and policy development required by
paragraph (2) shall include—
(A)an analysis of reported
crime and arrest data;
(B)an analysis of felony
conviction data to understand the percent of offenders who are sentenced to
prison or jail for particular offenses;
(C)an analysis of prison or
jail admission and length-of-stay data over a 3- to 5-year time period to
determine which cohorts of offenders account for the growth of the
population;
(D)an analysis of probation
and parole data to determine which cohorts of offenders are violating the
conditions of supervision and being revoked to prison or jail;
(E)an analysis of the
current capacity and effectiveness of institutional and community-based
risk-reduction, crime-prevention, and crime-fighting programs to divert
individuals from prisons or jails and to reduce recidivism among offenders on
community supervision;
(F)an analysis of
implementation of statutory and constitutional victims' rights provisions and
victim restitution awards and collection;
(G)consultation with
criminal justice stakeholders, including State corrections departments,
community corrections agencies, local jail systems, crime victims and
survivors, and other relevant governmental agencies and nonprofit
organizations;
(H)an analysis of current
criminal justice policies and expenditures to understand how the existing
system accounts for criminal justice trends;
(I)the development of a
prison or jail population projection using a simulation model based on
collected data to test the impact of various policy changes; and
(J)the development of
practical, data-driven policy options that can increase public safety, improve
offender accountability, reduce recidivism, and control growth of spending on
corrections in the relevant criminal justice system.
(4)To
be eligible to receive a grant under this subsection, an eligible entity shall
submit to the Attorney General an application, in such form and manner and at
such time as specified by the Attorney General, that includes a proposal that
describes how the grant will fulfill the objectives required by paragraph
(2).
(5)The
Attorney General, in awarding grants under this subsection, shall give priority
to eligible entities that—
(A)demonstrate a commitment
from the chief executive officer, legislative body, judiciary, law enforcement
officials, correctional agencies and prosecutors of the eligible entity to work
together in a collaborative, bipartisan approach to analyze the data and
develop criminal justice policy options;
(B)establish or designate a
multibranch, bipartisan, intergovernmental, interagency task force of elected
and appointed officials to address the criminal justice and public safety
challenges facing the jurisdiction; or
(C)demonstrate that the
projected growth over a 10-year period is expected to exceed current
corrections capacity.
(6)Upon selection of an eligible entity to receive a
grant under this subsection, the Attorney General shall assign and provide such
funds as are necessary from such grant to a technical assistance provider
working with the eligible entity to fulfill the requirements under paragraph
(3).
(7)The analysis, evaluation, and policy development required
for a grant under this subsection shall be completed not later than 18 months
after the receipt of funding for the grant unless granted an extension of time
by the Attorney General.
(b)Phase 2—Implementation
grants
(1)The Attorney General may make grants to eligible entities
to implement policies, programs, or practices designed to help jurisdictions
control growth in spending on corrections and increase public safety (referred
to in this Act as Phase 2 grants
).
(2)The
purposes of the Phase 2 grants shall be for an eligible entity to—
(A)fund policies, programs,
or practices identified by prior data analysis and policy development that
provide training and technical assistance, support the delivery of
risk-reduction programs, or otherwise enhance public safety and improve
offender accountability by strengthening the criminal justice system;
(B)encourage reinvestment of
averted prison or jail costs into policies, programs, or practices that enhance
public safety; and
(C)measure performance of
policies, programs, or practices enacted or established under subparagraphs (A)
and (B).
(3)The
policies, programs, or practices described by paragraphs (2)(A) and (2)(B)
may—
(A)provide training and
technical assistance, such as—
(i)training of corrections
and community corrections, judicial, substance abuse or mental health staff and
other key staff on evidence-based practices for reducing recidivism; or
(ii)training and technical
assistance to assist jurisdictions in implementing and validating new risk and
needs assessment tools; or technical assistance to implement evidence-based
policies in corrections or community corrections agencies;
(B)establish risk-reduction
programs, such as—
(i)substance abuse or mental
health treatment;
(ii)intermediate sanction
programs and facilities, including day reporting centers and electronic
monitoring; or
(iii)other training or
support programs aimed at reducing the risk of recidivism;
(C)modify probation and
parole policies to reduce the number of rearrests, reconvictions, and
revocations of people on probation and parole, to consider the safety of crime
victims and witnesses and to increase the number of successful completions of
probation and parole;
(D)establish policies,
programs, or practices that will control growth in the prison and jail
population and, as a result, better allocate resources and save costs;
or
(E)establish comparable
policies, programs, or practices that enhance public safety by strengthening
the criminal justice system.
(4)The performance measures described by paragraph
(2)(C) shall track key criminal justice trends across agencies and departments
to measure the impact of the programs described in paragraph (3), and include
the following measurements where applicable:
(A)Reduction in rearrest,
reconviction, and revocations of people currently on probation and
parole.
(B)Increases in the number
of successful completions of probation and parole.
(C)General crime
trends.
(D)Prison and jail
populations.
(5)To
be eligible to receive a grant under this subsection, an eligible entity shall
submit to the Attorney General an application, in such form and manner and at
such time as specified by the Attorney General that includes a proposal that
describes how the grant will fulfill the objectives required by paragraph
(2).
(6)The
Attorney General, in awarding grants under this subsection, shall give priority
to eligible entities that demonstrate that—
(A)the proposed policies,
programs, or practices will improve public safety and control growth in the
prison and jail populations through policies, programs, or practices that
ensure that—
(i)violent offenders are
incarcerated;
(ii)nonviolent offenders who
pose a minimal risk of harm to the community are supervised through effective
probation and parole systems and provided with effective risk-reduction
programs; and
(iii)effective
risk-reduction programs are integrated into a new overall criminal reinvestment
strategy;
(B)the proposed policies,
programs, or practices will have a significant impact on the geographic areas
identified by the analysis as having disproportionate numbers of people
returning from prison or jail; and
(C)grant funds received
under this subsection will be used to implement the proposed policies,
programs, or practices identified in an analysis conducted using a Phase 1
grant or through comparable work.
(7)
(A)The Federal share of the cost of a project carried out
using a grant made under this subsection shall be not more than 75
percent.
(B)
(i)Subject to paragraph (B), the non-Federal share for a
project carried out using a grant made under this subsection may be made in the
form of in-kind contributions that are directly related to the purpose for
which the grant was made.
(ii)Not more than 50 percent of the non-Federal share for
a project carried out using a grant made under this subsection may be in the
form of in-kind contributions.
(c)
(1)Beginning in fiscal year 2012 and each fiscal year
thereafter, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice shall conduct an
audit of not less than 10 percent of all grantees awarded funding under this
Act to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse of funds by grantees.
(2)A grantee awarded funds under this Act that is found to
have an unresolved audit finding shall not be eligible for an award of grant
funds under this Act for the first fiscal year beginning after the 1-year
period.
(3)In
addition to the priorities given to eligible entities under subsections (a)(5)
and (b)(6), the Attorney General, in awarding grants under this Act, shall give
priority to eligible entities that, within the 3 fiscal years prior to
submitting an application for a grant under this Act, have not been found to
have an unresolved audit finding showing a violation in the terms or conditions
of a Department of Justice grant program.
(4)In
this subsection, the term unresolved audit finding means an audit
report finding or recommendation that the grantee has utilized grant funds for
an unauthorized expenditure or otherwise unallowable cost that is not closed or
resolved within a 1-year period beginning on the date of an initial
notification of the finding or recommendation.
(d)The Attorney General shall report to the Committees on the
Judiciary of the Senate and the House of Representatives on November 1 of each
year concerning the development and implementation of grants under this section
and strategies developed, which shall include information concerning—
(1)the number and identity
of the grantees who have received analyses and program development
grants;
(2)the progress of grantees
in conducting analyses and program development;
(3)the number and identity
of the grantees receiving implementation grants;
(4)the progress of grantees
in implementing criminal justice reinvestment strategies; and
(5)the performance of
entities implementing criminal justice reinvestment strategies, including
relevant data on—
(A)the reduction, if any, in
the number of rearrests, reconvictions, and revocations of people currently on
probation and parole;
(B)the increase, if any, in
the number of successful completions of probation and parole;
(C)the reduction or
stabilization, if any, of the growth of the prison and jail population;
(D)the portion of averted
costs, if any, that has been or will be reinvested to reduce the rate of
rearrest, reconviction, and revocation to increase public safety; and
(E)the reduction, if any, in
rearrest rates by people under the supervision of the criminal justice
system.
(e)The Attorney General shall establish an information
clearinghouse for data collected and for best practices developed by eligible
entities receiving a grant under this section developed in carrying out grants
under this section.
(f)Applications
for grants shall be considered on a rolling basis and be responded to in a
timely fashion in order to provide assistance to policymakers facing various
budget timelines.
(g)The Attorney General shall ensure, to the extent
reasonable and practical, that grants awarded under this section are equitably
distributed among the geographical regions and between urban and rural
populations, including Indian tribes.
(h)Not more than 5 percent of funds authorized in
subsection (i) per year may be used by the Attorney General for salaries and
Department of Justice administrative expenses.
(i)Authorization of
appropriationsThere are authorized to be appropriated
$25,000,000 to carry out this section for each of the fiscal years 2011 through
2015.
March 22 (legislative day, March 19), 2010
Reported with an amendment