Some states see economic benefit from prison farms

Milwaukee County Parks Director Sue Black's assertion last week that her department lacks the funds to take over the Farm and Fish Hatchery has reignited debate about the farm. This year's county budget transferred the program – a perennial target for cuts by the Walker administration -- from the sheriff’s office to the parks department midyear, at a reduced funding amount. The County Board's finance committee recommended a modified version of the plan to move the program, and the issue will be discussed by the full County Board on Thursday.

Supporters tout several benefits of the program: the harvested crops are donated to food pantries; the fish stock county ponds; and inmates learn work skills. Those less enthusiastic about the program question its appropriateness for a correctional environment and its necessity given the county's severe financial challenges.

Interestingly, Milwaukee's discussion about closing its farm due to lack of funds comes at a time when corrections facilities in other parts of the country are looking to prison and jail farms as a way to save money. Governing magazine, for example, cites two correctional gardens employed to feed inmates.

One Connecticut prison's savings of more than $5,000 in the summer of 2009 influenced the Corrections Commissioner to replicate prison farms across the state. Those prisons that already have gardens are being asked to expand them. In addition to lower food costs, savings include paying less to dispose of waste at the prison (kitchen scraps are composted), and not having to pay for flowers in landscaping (flowers are grown from donated seeds).

Meanwhile, an Ohio sheriff was so pleased with the way his jail farm is feeding the inmates that he plans to introduce a chicken-raising effort, estimating that for every 50 donated chickens the inmates raise, the jail cafeteria will get 300 pounds of meat. His actions, which in addition to growing food included eliminating all red meat and hot dinners, saved $25,000 on food costs in 2009.

Milwaukee's farm operation differs from the examples in Connecticut and Ohio in that the crops are used to feed the poor and not to feed the inmates. Prior to Milwaukee County's decision to privatize the House of Correction's food service in 2003, the crops were used to supplement inmate meals. Following privatization, however, Hunger Task Force stepped in to distribute the unwanted produce to area food pantries. In addition, while both the Connecticut prison and Ohio jail received their gardening supplies through donations, Milwaukee has found private support harder to come by.

It remains to be seen whether Milwaukee County's program will survive, but the Connecticut and Ohio programs show that in some cases prison farms may be opportunities for savings, as opposed to drains on already challenged budgets.

Experimental policy: when social science trumps politics

The "broken windows" theory of policing proposes that crime arises out of certain conditions and that tolerance of misdemeanor crimes can result in greater incidences of more serious crimes. If crime-ridden neighborhoods are cleaned up, if graffiti and jaywalking and loitering ordinances are enforced, the broken windows theory predicts violent and property crimes will abate in those neighborhoods.

As a theory, it sounds reasonable, and it has in fact been put into place as policy in many cities across the globe, including New York (where it is known as "zero-tolerance policing"), Boston, and yes, Milwaukee. Some of the cities saw crime rates drop dramatically, some saw smaller improvements, and some saw no change. So, as theories go, maybe it's less like a scientific theory, to be proven or disproven, and more like a philosophy, unable to be proved. (And of course, some of this variance in success is probably explained by the fact that not every police force is willing or able to implement all the elements of the practice and other neighborhood improvement efforts may have played a part, as well.)

Policymakers and public safety officers in Lowell, MA were adherents to the philosophy, but open to the possibility that, as a theory, it could be tested. So they worked with researchers from Harvard and Suffolk universities to implement a local policy experiment--something extremely rare in public policy research.

The experiment involved implementing "broken windows" policing practice in some high crime neighborhoods and policing as usual in others. Yes, you read that right, in some high crime neighborhoods they resisted making a policy change they believed in, so that they could measure the effect of the change in other neighborhoods. Policy effectiveness is most often measured after implementation and usually by third-party researchers such as academics. Local policymakers testing out a policy themselves, prior to adoption, is not the norm.

Why is this not done more often? Well, as you can imagine, no matter how the experiment turns out, testing a policy is quite a risk, politically. If the policy is proven not to work, local critics will not only argue time and money was wasted on it, all critics will now have data as ammunition against the policy. If the policy is proven to have a positive effect, there's an argument that time and money were wasted in waiting to fully implement it. For elected officials, research is not often worth the political risk. When it comes to crime, there are obviously other, more imperative risks as well.

Beyond the political risks, there are other reasons officials tend not to experiment with policy. At the local level, there is often neither the time nor money to give a new policy a test-run. At the state level, pilot projects are more common but, rather than being designed as empirical tests of effectiveness, they are usually seen as ways to phase-in implementation of new policy.

Kudos to Lowell for using scientific method to make policy decisions (the experiment confirmed their hypothesis and they have implemented the new policy) and for creating data that other policymakers can utilize. More municipalities should follow their lead. After all, in times of tough budgets, having reliable data can help when making the hard decisions.

The Infrastructure-Police Tug of War

Sunday’s expose in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on city police overtime raised questions about management choices over the past couple of years. But a bigger picture of shifting priorities emerges when the analysis spans the longer term. Over the past several decades, the police department has gobbled an ever-increasing piece of the city’s financial pie.

Mayor Barrett’s proposed 2008 budget calls for $575 million in spending on general city purposes. Most of the money will go to the police ($217 million) and fire ($97 million) departments. Compare that to 60 years ago, when police accounted for less than 20% of city spending and nearly half went to public works, largely to develop and maintain the city’s infrastructure. Put another way, public works spending was well over double police spending in 1947; today we spend twice as much on police as on public works.

Obviously many factors help explain this dramatic change. What’s constant over the years is that about three-quarters of city tax money supports just three functions of municipal government: police, fire and public works. In the long run, the police department has dominated, infrastructure gets a smaller piece of the pie, and the relentless trend raises a red flag about the city’s long-term capacity to provide for the infrastructure that underlies economic growth.

PPF Pearls: Paying for more police is a Milwaukee tradition

Mayor Barrett introduced his proposed budget yesterday and sparked a column by Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine that asks:

But at what point is some mayor going to put down his or her foot and say that we don’t need more officers, we need to more efficiently use the huge force we already have?

Murphy's question is asked in light of the city comptroller's June audit which found Milwaukee has more police per capita than other cities of similar size, nearly twice as many in some cases.

The Forum has been asking this same question for years. During the last mayoral campaign season we issued a series of briefs on vital issues for the city and its next leader: one was focused on the police department.

From our findings:

The City of Milwaukee has long talked of its ability to create efficiencies and eliminate positions. However, in large measure, the Police Department has not been included in attempts to shrink government by cutting positions. Rather, City budgets over the last several years speak of strengthening the efficiency of the City as a whole by eliminating positions while strengthening public safety by adding police positions. As Figure 6 shows, the Police Department has increased its position authority 2.3% since 1994, while the General City Purposes (GCP) budget’s position authority has decreased 8.7%, and the total budget has cut 14.2% of its positions.

In addition, we found that the budgeted salaries for the police department increased by 31% between 1994 and 2003, compared to an inflation rate of 23% during that time period.

Unfortunately, despite the increases in police department staff, Milwaukee's crime rate decreased less between 1992 and 2002 than other similar cities nationally. Washington DC, Minneapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis...they all reduced crime to a greater extent than Milwaukee over that time period. In addition, our crime clearance rate was lower than in other cities.

Mayor Barrett's proposal isn't novel for Milwaukee and the Forum will continue to monitor the police department's budget. But maybe its time to stop doing the same thing while expecting a different result.

NOTE: The other two briefs in the 2003 vital issues series are also relevant to the current budget deliberations. Brief 1 covered property value trends while Brief 3 analyzed city finances. Updated vital issue briefs will be released this winter.