Criminal Justice Reform
Kentucky has:
- 35,000 people locked in incarceration facilities.
- The 2nd highest growth rate for incarceration rate in theUSA, 20% higher than the national rate per-capita.
- 9th highest incarnation rate in our nation.
- 7th highest in the world.
- 2x the female incarceration rate is 2nd highest in the nation
- 1 in 5 Ky children has a parent in the Criminal Justice system.
- The cost will be an additional $600 million over next decade without changes
- Blacks 5x the number of whites even though they are < 10% of Ky population
- More than 104,000 under criminal justice system supervision
- Average of $18,000 per inmate per year (strictly in-house expense) and $40,000 for maximum security facilities.
- Drug-related charges have tripled since 2012
*Info from Report on KY Prisons
Kentucky Criminal Justice – Facts
Reform is needed in our approach to nonviolent criminal offenders in the Commonwealth. We cannot keep locking people up and paying the bill to keep them in jails. The cost is astronomical and rising; in more than one way. Our families are being torn apart, one in five children in Kentucky has a parent in lock-up. We suffer economically-inmates lose jobs, homes, automobiles, and insurance because they can’t work and pay bills. Children lose parents because they are separated from the home, parents lose children and overburden our foster care and social services systems. All of which is added peripheral costs resulting from prison time and the Commonwealth taxpayers absorb the cost.
Abolishing minimum sentences for non-violent offenses would reduce incarceration costs, decriminalizing marijuana would result in an immediate de-escalation of prison expenses, and expanded social service intervention could reduce the emotional impact of separation on families. Proactive intervention in drug-use cases will act as a means of reducing incarceration as well.
Pre-trial justice reform is working to equalize the way bail is determined and make it more equitable for those without property and access to large sums of cash to have a way to remain home and to work in lieu of cash or property bonds while awaiting a court date.
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