If you’re worried about how much sunshine there is in state government, you need to read portions of the state auditor’s new report, “Management Audit of the Department of Public Safety’s Contracting for Prison Beds and Services.”
A section detailing the auditor’s access to information, or lack of it, begins on page 11. Here the auditor accuses the Department of Public Safety of attempting to withhold documents and delay disclosures, even ordering staff not to respond to requests from audit staff but instead to route all responses through the department’s top management.
If corrections administrators were this bold in blocking the state auditor, you’ve got to assume that they were far worse in handling requests for information from the general public.
For example:
For requests specific to Offendertrak, the department’s inmate tracking system, the deputy director of administration questioned our need for the information, maintaining that it was not pertinent to the scope of our audit. The management information system administrator was instructed not to meet with our analyst or provide answers to questions about Offendertrak. Instead, all inquiries were directed to the business management officer and the deputy director of administration.
Several similar instances are cited.
The audit found that the legislature does not get sufficient or accurate information on costs of imprisonment from the department, then went further to accuse the department of misleading policy makers.
The politics here are interesting and not unique to corrections. The political dynamic is noted by the auditor in passing:
Because funding is virtually guaranteed, management is indifferent to the needs of policymakers and the public for accurate and reliable cost information.
I’ve heard exactly the same charge made about the Department of Transportation, where most programs are funded through special funds (airports, highways, and harbors). This leaves DOT beyond the legislature’s normal mechanisms of control, since expenditures from those special funds are NOT subject to routine legislative budget controls. DOT administrators, like those in corrections, can be less than responsive because most of their budget is beyond legislative control. Corrections isn’t shielded by special funds, but by a political calculation that, when all is said and done, they’ll get whatever they need to pay for their prisoners.
In any case, this audit should be widely read, especially given the prominence of corrections in the state budget.
In Hawaii, spending on incarceration has soared in recent years, despite the economic problems that have been haunting the state. Since the turn of the century, the corrections budget has increased by 87.5 percent (from $128 million in 2000 to $225 million in 2009). During the same time, the money spent to send prisoners to private prisons increased by 192 percent, from $20 million to $58.4 million. As it stands now, 26.0 percent of the Department of Public Safety (PSD) general fund operating appropriations goes toward incarcerating prisoners outside of Hawaii; this is up from 15.6 percent in 2000.
Where did the money that fueled Hawaii’s and the nation’s imprisonment boom come from?
Higher education has been a clear loser in the nation’s choice to fund bars not books. A Pew study documented that between 1987 and 2007, corrections budgets rose by 127 percent (meaning they more than doubled), while higher education funding increased by a far more modest amount: only 21 percent. [From The Value of Hawaii, chapter on prisons by Kat Brady and Meda Chesney-Lind.]