State Changes Course on Calculating Cost of Longer Sentences

State legislators will work with more accurate dollar figures in the upcoming session when bills proposing stiffer sentencing hit the floor.

At the request of law enforcement officials unhappy with escalating cost projections – making their legislation tougher to pass – the Fiscal Affairs Committee took a second look at its procedure. But the changes could cause some cost estimates to go further up, not down.

Fiscal Affairs executive director Jim White says he found the old formula was based on an absolute minimum sentence. The committee’s new procedure will use Department of Corrections data for actual time served, which will raise the cost of some proposals for tougher sentencing.

“A class E felony would go from three-tenths of one year to 1.8 years. The actually average time served on an E felony is 1.8 years.”

However, the cost projections will also take recidivism into account for the first time. The savings created by locking up repeat offenders for an extended period could reduce the price tag on some legislation.