State Strategies to Manage Budget Shortfalls

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Case Study: Community Corrections in Connecticut

In the late 1980s, the Connecticut General Assembly created the Alternative Incarceration Program (AIP). The program was implemented to address two main needs: to alleviate jail and prison overcrowding and to provide judges with a larger menu of sentencing options. Administered by the courts, the program identifies and diverts prison-bound criminals into community-based programs that include intensive supervision, drug and alcohol testing and counseling, education, anger management and family counseling. Approximately 4,200 offenders are supervised daily by private organizations that have contracted with the courts. During FY 1993-94, administrative costs for the program accounted for 2.6 percent of the program's $25 million budget.

Preliminary results from the first two years of a five-year study of the AIP program have been favorable:

The average annual cost for a slot in the AIP Program is $5,000 (compared with Connecticut's annual cost of $25,000 for housing an inmate in prison). This produces an annual cost savings to the state of approximately $84 million. The program also eliminates the possible need for $600 million in capital costs for new prisons.
Defendants in the AIP program pending trial had much lower re-arrest rates than non-AIP counterparts (10 percent versus 26 percent) and were four times less likely to be sentenced to prison upon conviction.
Recidivism rates among AIP participants were lower than those offenders who were sentenced to prison (24 percent versus 30 percent).
Other identified benefits of the AIP Program have included more jail and prison space being made available for more violent offenders, an increase in the length of sentences served because jail and prison space is available and, through the various AIP sentencing options, judges have been able to make the punishment better fit the crime. {For more information on this program see Longitudinal Study: Alternatives to Incarceration Sentencing Evaluation, Year 2, State of Connecticut, Judicial Branch, April 1996.}

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Written December 1996, posted January 2003, reviewed December 2003
Email statebudget-info@ncsl.org for more information.
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