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CRIMINAL JUSTICE REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009,

AND THE HONEST OPPORTUNITY PROBATION

WITH ENFORCEMENT (HOPE) INITIATIVE ACT

OF 2009

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, 

AND HOMELAND SECURITY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

ON

H.R. 4080 and H.R. 4055

MAY 11, 2010

Serial No. 111–114

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan, Chairman 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR.,

Georgia 

PEDRO PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

JUDY CHU, California 

TED DEUTCH, Florida 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

DANIEL MAFFEI, New York 

JARED POLIS, Colorado 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TED POE, Texas 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

TOM ROONEY, Florida 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi

PERRY APELBAUM, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

SEAN MCLAUGHLIN, Minority Chief of Staff and General Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia, Chairman

PEDRO PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

[Vacant] 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

TOM ROONEY, Florida

BOBBY VASSAR, Chief Counsel 

CAROLINE LYNCH, Minority Counsel 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

MAY 11, 2010

Page 

THE BILLS 

H.R. 4080, the ‘‘Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of 2009’’ .............................. 5

H.R. 4055, the ‘‘Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) 

Initiative Act of 2009’’ .......................................................................................... 19

OPENING STATEMENTS 

The Honorable Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of Virginia, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, 

and Homeland Security ....................................................................................... 1

The Honorable Ted Poe, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Texas, and Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland 

Security ................................................................................................................. 29

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Adam B. Schiff, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 31

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 34

Mr. Adam Gelb, Director, Public Safety Performance Project, Pew Center 

on the States, Washington, DC 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 38

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 41

The Honorable John T. Broderick, Jr., Chief Justice of the New Hampshire 

Supreme Court, Concord, NH 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 45

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 47

The Honorable Jerry Madden, Texas House of Representatives, Plano, TX 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 52

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 56

Nancy G. La Vigne, Ph.D., Director, Justice Policy Center, The Urban Institute, Washington, DC 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 62

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 64

The Honorable Steven S. Alm, Judge, Second Division, Circuit Court of the 

First Judicial Circuit, Honolulu, HI 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 69

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 72

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Material submitted by Adam Gelb, Director, Public Safety Performance 

Project, Pew Center on the States, Washington, DC ........................................ 88

Material submitted by the Honorable Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, a Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, and Chairman, Subcommittee 

on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security ................................................... 92

APPENDIX 

Material Submitted for the Hearing Record .......................................................... 99

(1)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REINVESTMENT ACT OF 

2009, AND THE HONEST OPPORTUNITY PROBATION WITH ENFORCEMENT (HOPE) INITIATIVE ACT OF 2009

TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2010

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM,

AND HOMELAND SECURITY

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 4 p.m., in room 

2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Robert C. 

‘‘Bobby’’ Scott (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Scott, Quigley, and Poe. 

Staff Present: (Majority) Bobby Vassar, Subcommittee Chief 

Counsel; Liliana Coronado, (Fellow) Federal Public Defender Office 

Detailee; Ron LeGrand, Counsel; Veronica Eligan, Professional 

Staff Member; (Minority) Caroline Lynch, Counsel; Travis Norton, 

Counsel; and Kelsey Whitlock, Staff Assistant. 

Mr. SCOTT. The Subcommittee will come to order. 

And I welcome you to today’s Crime subcommittee hearing on 

H.R. 4080, the ‘‘Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of 2009,’’ and 

H.R. 4055, the ‘‘Honest Opportunity with Probation, or HOPE, Initiative Act of 2009.’’

Both of these bills have been introduced by the gentleman from 

California, Mr. Schiff, and represent a bipartisan effort to address 

the corrections crisis that is plaguing our country. 

Over the last 20 years, State spending on corrections has increased exponentially, and the projections are that it will only continue to grow. The same is true with the prison population in this 

country. While State spending on incarceration rates have dramatically increased over the last two decades, recidivism remains high. 

Of the approximately 700,000 individuals released from prison in 

2008, it is estimated that half will be reincarcerated within 3 years, 

and even more will be arrested. This is unacceptably high. 

And the high recidivism rate among jail populations is also a 

problem. For example, of the 12 million admissions between July 

1, 2004, and June 30, 2005, 71 percent had been incarcerated twice 

in 12 months. States and localities cannot continue to proceed with 

business as usual, as business as usual is not working for either 

budgets or for public safety. 

2

We are going to show one of the charts right now. This is a chart 

of incarceration rates, just to give people an idea of where we are 

in incarceration. The incarceration rates are about 50 to 200 per 

100,000. This chart, the blue is the United States leading the 

world, rivaled only by Russia. Russia is about 600-and-some per 

100,000; the United States over 700 per 100,000. 

The next chart shows the African American incarceration rate at 

2,200. The large bar is the top 10 States lock up African Americans 

at the rate of about 4,000 per 100,000. 

The United States rates, and particularly the African American 

incarceration rates, are particularly egregious when you look at the 

fact that the Pew Center research has estimated that anything 

over 500 per 100,000 is actually counterproductive. 

Many States have recognized the waste in money. A gentleman 

from North Carolina, Mel Watt, a Member of this Committee, informed me that North Carolina was looking at ways of reducing the 

prison population by investing in prevention and early intervention 

programs. I talked to my secretary of public safety in Virginia 

today, and they are also making those investments in prevention 

and early intervention, particularly as it pertains to the Second 

Chance Act, implementing a very aggressive process. 

But States and county policymakers have begun all over the 

country exploring new strategies for addressing the corrections crisis that is fiscally crippling their budgets. Several States, as I have 

indicated, have turned to criminal justice reinvestment projects to 

help them find solutions to incarceration and corrections crisis 

without compromising public safety. 

Criminal justice reinvestment involves redirecting corrections 

moneys into policies that keep people safer while slowing the 

growth of prison and jail populations. The idea is to reinvest the 

resulting savings back into the community in ways that advance 

the goals of public safety through strategies proven to be effective 

and efficient in accomplishing that result. 

To put it simply, both H.R. 4080 and H.R. 4055 address the 

country’s incarceration crisis by focusing on crime policies that 

work. In this hearing, we will consider both of these bills that will 

support criminal justice reinvestment projects across the country. 

To inform our consideration of these bills, witnesses will highlight the work of several States and counties that have developed 

innovative justice reinvestment policies, some of which have already proven very effective at reducing recidivism and helping people overcome their substance abuse problems. 

H.R. 4080, the ‘‘Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of 2009,’’ creates a new public safety performance grant program for State and 

local governments to implement justice reinvestment strategies. It 

has two phases of funding: Phase one grants are for the analysis 

of the criminal justice system data, the evaluation of criminal justice policies, and the cost-effectiveness of their current spending on 

corrections, as well as the development of data-driven policies that 

can increase public safety and improve accountability of offenders. 

The bill mentions data-driven specifically, and you would wonder 

why you would have to put ‘‘data-driven’’ in a bill; isn’t that insulting? Well, if you didn’t put it in there, it would not be data-driven, 

3

it would be slogan-driven. So we have to outline, and I thank the 

gentleman from California for putting that in his bill specifically. 

This type of funding is critical because many States lack adequate research capabilities to analyze the causes of the exploding 

State prison and jail populations and high recidivism rates. States 

and counties are in the midst of fiscal crises, and they simply do 

not have the funds to dedicate debt necessary for the research that 

is needed to develop the policies that directly target the problems 

that they are having. This grant program will help them do that 

so the policies that are formulated are based in research and evidence about what works. 

Phase two will be implementation, to fund the programs and 

strengthen the criminal justice system, such as providing training 

and technical assistance or support the delivery of risk-reduction 

programs. These grants also support the reinvestment of averted 

prison or jail costs in the programs that enhance public safety by 

strengthening the criminal justice system, because criminal justice 

reinvestment means reinvesting the savings in the much-needed 

services such as drug treatment or re-entry assistance to the highrisk communities and individuals from which the jail or prison populations are drawn. And, as I indicated, this will be reinvested. As 

the savings are achieved, the money will be reinvested back into 

prevention and early intervention programs. The bill authorizes $35 million for each of the fiscal years 2010 

to 2014 and requires the Attorney General to report to Congress 

yearly on the implementation and performance of the policies, 

thereby ensuring accountability of the grants. 

One example of the criminal justice reinvestment strategy that 

has had concrete and compelling results is Hawaii’s HOPE Probation Project. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, at 

year end more than 7 million people were under corrections supervision in the United States, including 70 percent who were supervised in the community on probation or parole and 30 percent who 

are held in custody in jails and prisons. This means that one out 

of 45 people are on community supervision, with the majority on 

probation, nearly 4.3 million, an increase of nearly 300 percent 

since 1980. The 4.3 million probationers represent an increase from 

3.8 million in 2000 and accounts for 80 percent of the growth in 

corrections population between 2000 and 2009. 

It is noteworthy to note that the number of probationers who 

have drug problems is also on the rise. Three in 10 probationers 

were drug offenders in 2008, up from just a quarter in 2000. What 

this tells us is that more people are on probation now than ever 

before and they have significant needs. 

Six years ago, Judge Alm from Hawaii’s First Circuit Court did 

something about it. In 2000, he launched a pilot project aimed at 

reducing probation violations by offenders who posed a high risk of 

recidivism. The program, called Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation 

with Enforcement, HOPE, consisted of intensified supervision of 

probationers, including random drug testing, frequent meetings between offender and their probation officer, and substance abuse 

services as appropriate. The HOPE probation represented a stark 

change from the way probation violators were typically handled by 

the probation office. 

4

Inspired by the success of Hawaii’s HOPE project, H.R. 4055, the 

‘‘Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement Act of 2009,’’ 

would create a comprehensive grant demonstration project to 

award grants to State and local courts to establish probation programs to reduce drug use, crime, and recidivism by requiring swift, 

predictable, and graduated sanctions for noncompliance with conditions of probation. 

Twenty-five million dollars is authorized for up to 20 pilot programs. Stringent grantee requirements will ensure that the pilots 

are designed and evaluated in an appropriate manner. The key facets of each program will include the use of regular drug testing; responding to violations of probation rules with immediate arrest; 

and swift and certain modification of conditions of probation, including imposition of short jail stays. 

There is also an evaluation component to compare the outcomes 

between program participants and similarly situated probationers 

not in the program. It will also include a calculation of the amount 

of cost savings resulting from the reduced incarceration achieved 

through the program and a determination of how much can be invested into more policies that work. 

The criminal justice reinvestment can take on different forms, 

and it won’t look the same in every city or county or State, because 

it should be tailored to meet the needs of each. Today we will hear 

about different justice reinvestment initiatives from several States 

and counties, each unique and some still in the early stages. 

The success that has already been achieved, however, demonstrates that the dual goals of keeping people safe and decreasing 

corrections spending are not mutually exclusive. It is with hope inspired by the important justice reinvestment work that has already 

been undertaken that I invite everyone to listen to the diverse witnesses who will testify at today’s hearing. 

[The bills, H.R. 4080 and H.R. 4055, follow:]

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HR4055-10.eps
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Mr. SCOTT. It is now my pleasure to recognize our colleague, the 

Honorable Ted Poe from Texas, who is substituting for Ranking 

Member Gohmert today. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank you for convening this hearing to discuss both 

of these pieces of legislation, the ‘‘Criminal Justice Reinvestment 

Act’’ and the ‘‘HOPE Initiative Act.’’ Both bills aim to reduce criminal recidivism and curb the cost of State and local law enforcement 

efforts. 

H.R. 4080, the ‘‘Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act,’’ creates a 

Federal program to assist State and local government efforts to reform the criminal justice systems. The bill authorizes the Attorney 

General to provide grants to help jurisdictions study criminal justice trends and implement policies that provide cost-effectiveness of 

corrections programs. 

Similarly, H.R. 4055, the ‘‘HOPE Initiative Act,’’ creates a Federal grant program to help State and local jurisdictions to reform 

their probation systems. The program is modeled after that successful experiment in Hawaii that decreased the strain on corrections facilities by instructing probationers and parolees on the true 

consequences of violating the term of their release. 

While both of these new Federal programs will cost money up 

front, results from test programs in the States have yielded significant overall cost savings down the road. These bills are, therefore, 

ultimately likely to save the States and, of course, the taxpayers’ 

money, while contributing to a noticeable increase in public safety. 

In the face of projected record State budget deficits, certain 

States, including my own State of Texas, have undertaken criminal 

justice reinvestment initiatives to save money by reducing inefficiencies in State and local criminal justice systems. I am pleased 

to welcome as a witness today Representative Jerry Madden of the 

Texas House of Representatives, who played a central role in reforming the Texas prison system to operate more effectively. 

I will ask you momentarily, Representative Madden, how many 

people are in the State penitentiary in Texas today, but I suspect 

it is around 160,000. 

Mr. MADDEN. It is 153,950, as of the end of tomorrow. 

Mr. POE. I know, you go and you check the stats every day. 

And a lot of those people that are in the Texas penitentiary I 

know on a personal basis. 

But, anyway, in Travis County, for example, in Travis County, 

Texas, a 2-year overhaul of the adult probation department reduced recidivism rates in part by funding classes to teach offenders 

how to adjust their thinking and make better moral choices. 

In May of 2007, the Kansas State legislature created a program 

for community corrections programs to design strategies to reduce 

revocations by 20 percent. The legislature approved good time credits to encourage offenders to successfully complete educational, vocational, and treatment programs prior to their release. The State 

of Kansas is supposed to be able to save about $80 million in the 

next 5 years. 

I am proud to be the cosponsor of H.R. 4055, the ‘‘HOPE Initiative’’; however, the leading advocate for this legislation is the sponsor, chief sponsor, Congressman Adam Schiff from California. I apVerDate 0ct 09 2002 18:42 Nov 04, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\051110\56393.000 HJUD1 PsN: 56393
30

preciate his work on this legislation. This legislation will provide 

funding for up to 20 pilot programs in which State and local court 

systems impose a set of graduated penalties for probation and parole violators. 

I hope the HOPE programs will yield successes similar to those 

realized in the State of Hawaii. The Pew study says the HOPE probationers in Hawaii were 55 percent less likely to be arrested for 

a new crime; 72 percent less likely to use drugs; 61 percent less 

likely to skip appointments with their probation officer; and 53 percent less likely to have their probation revoked than offenders who 

weren’t in the program. 

If passed, both of these pieces of legislation will save States 

money in the long run by developing efficient methods for deterring 

crime and sentencing law violators. As a former State judge, I support efforts to develop creative methods to reduce crime and recidivism at the State, local, and Federal level. And these bills, I think, 

will do so while promoting public safety and saving taxpayers’ 

money. 

In my experience as a judge for 22 years, it seems to me that, 

when a person is sentenced, the sentence must mean something. 

Too often, what takes place in a courtroom is meaningless; it 

doesn’t mean anything to anybody. It should certainly mean something to the offender; it should mean something to the victim. And 

the public must feel like there is a sense of justice when that sentence is imposed. And, too often, there is a perception that if a person receives a probated sentence, it is just giving away the courthouse to the defender and he is never going to be held accountable 

for that. Hopefully, those times can change and this legislation will 

bring some consequences for violating a person’s probation. What 

a novel concept. 

So I yield back the balance of my time, and I will have questions 

later. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

We have two panels of witnesses who will help us consider these 

important bills today. 

Our first panel will have one witness, our colleague, the gentleman from California’s 29th District, Representative Adam Schiff, 

who introduced both H.R. 4080 and H.R. 4055. 

Representative Schiff serves on three Committees. In addition to 

serving on the Judiciary Committee, he serves on the House Appropriations Committee and three Subcommittees on the House Appropriations Committee, including the Commerce, Justice, Science, 

and Related Agencies Subcommittee; also serves on the Permanent 

Select Committee on Intelligence. 

As a former prosecutor, he has particular expertise when it 

comes to his service on this Subcommittee as well as the full Judiciary Committee. 

Mr. Schiff? 

31

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE ADAM B. SCHIFF, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. SCHIFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and today’s Ranking 

Member, Mr. Poe. I want to thank you both for calling the hearing 

today and for inviting me to testify before the Subcommittee. 

Under your leadership, this Subcommittee has closely examined 

criminal justice policy issues by focusing on the promotion of proven strategies for use of evidence-based research. Today’s hearing 

will focus on two pieces of legislation that are based on innovative 

and highly promising approaches to addressing criminal justice 

issues. 

A recent Pew study indicates that one in 31 adults is under correctional control. That is up from one in 77 in 1982. Over the past 

two decades, corrections has been the second-fastest-growing area 

of State expenditures, second only to Medicaid. State corrections 

costs now top $50 billion, consuming one in every 15 discretionary 

dollars, a significant increase from the $10 billion spent some 20 

years ago. These numbers, as you have pointed out, Mr. Chairman, 

are unsustainable, and it is clear that our approach must drastically change. 

Determining how to best address our criminal and juvenile justice systems is a task that policymakers have grappled with for 

years. New and innovative approaches often lose out to established 

and well-known initiatives even where outcomes are not sufficiently positive, as Congress is often wary of experimentation. As 

policymakers, we must think outside the box more often and explore new and innovative ideas to tackle criminal justice problems. 

This is especially important in areas that we have attempted to address for some time but with little success. 

Budget cuts and prison overcrowding are creating a crisis situation in many States. In my home State of California, prisons house 

over 171,000 inmates, nearly twice their operating capacity, and we 

have spent almost 10 percent of total general fund expenditures on 

corrections. Because of unacceptable overcrowding, we are now 

faced with a judicial order to release about a quarter of our entire 

prison population. 

Data-driven reinvestment strategies can assist policymakers in 

California and elsewhere to reduce spending on corrections while 

increasing public safety. Promising results, as Representative Poe 

has pointed out, have been seen in places like Texas, Kansas, and 

other jurisdictions after such strategies have been implemented. 

And you will hear about how some of these successes were accomplished from the panel that follows. 

Based on the successful work, we have introduced the bipartisan 

‘‘Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of 2009’’ with my colleague 

Dan Lungren, and Senators Whitehouse and Cornyn have introduced identical legislation, recently reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support. 

This legislation is designed to assist State and local governments 

in implementing justice reinvestment strategies. No two States are 

the same, and the drivers of increased corrections costs and prison 

populations are unique in each State. The legislation, therefore, devotes grant funding for intensive analysis of criminal justice data, 

32

policies, and cost-effectiveness of current spending on corrections in 

order to develop data-driven policy options that can address this. 

The bill then provides resources for the implementation of solutions—for example, providing training and technical assistance or 

support for the delivery of risk-reduction programs—and for reinvesting averted prison costs to bolster such initiatives. 

Currently, there are at least 14 States on a waiting list seeking 

such technical assistance, and eight other States are seeking to expand such work. Congress has the opportunity to step in and help 

answer this call for assistance. 

Another area where we have to look for new ideas and approaches is our drug policy. The conservative American Enterprise 

Institute concluded in a study that tough enforcement, the centerpiece of American drug policy in terms of rhetoric, budget, and substance, has little to show by way of success. 

A substantial amount of crime and a substantial share of prison 

occupancy is directly tied to illicit drug consumption. In addition, 

we know that a relatively small group of chronic drug users consumes the vast majority of illicit drugs in the U.S., and about 

three-quarters of this group pass through the criminal justice system at some point. So reducing drug consumption in the U.S. requires effectively addressing the drug habits of supervised offenders. 

Furthermore, the failure of individuals serving terms of probation to successfully complete those terms is a major contributor to 

prison admission. For example, in 2007, more than a quarter-million individuals on probation were admitted to prison. Effectively 

addressing drug use by these individuals will reduce national drug 

consumption, crime rates, and burdens on taxpayers. 

In 2004, Judge Steven Alm of Hawaii launched a pilot program 

to reduce probation violations by offenders at high risk of recidivism. This intensified supervision program, called Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement, or HOPE, uses graduated sanctions, beginning with the threat of short jail stays, as an incentive 

for compliance. Defendants are clearly warned that, if they violate 

the rules, they go to jail. Participants receive swift and immediate 

sanctions for each violation, such as testing dirty for drugs or missing appointments with a probation officer. 

The results, as Mr. Poe indicated, are very positive: 55 percent 

less likely to be arrested for a new crime; 72 percent less likely to 

use drugs; 61 percent less likely to skip appointments; 53 percent 

less likely to have their probation revoked. 

An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association 

found that, if the HOPE initiative was replicated effectively in multiple jurisdictions, the program might have broader benefits beyond 

assisting probationer participants at risk for heavy drug use, such 

as helping to shrink the market for illegal drugs and the profits of 

drug trafficking organizations. 

I have introduced bipartisan legislation with my colleague, Representative Poe of Texas, that would promote and expand the use 

of this model in a number of jurisdictions across the country. 

And I very much appreciate your leadership and support, Representative Poe. It is good when you have a former prosecutor team 

up with a former judge. 

33

The Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement, or HOPE, 

Initiative of 2009 is designed to promote the establish of probation 

demonstration programs that reduce drug use, crime, and recidivism by requiring swift, predictable, and graduated sanctions for 

noncompliance. Stringent requirements will ensure that the pilots 

are designed and evaluated in an appropriate manner, and our legislation would require determination of the cost savings resulting 

from the program and an accounting for reinvestment of those savings for expansions of the effort. 

Earlier today, President Obama transmitted to Congress the 

2010 National Drug Control Strategy. In this blueprint for reducing 

illicit drug use and its harmful consequences in America, support 

is specifically outlined for Project HOPE and drug testing with certain and swift sanctions in probation and parole systems. The 

strategy notes that Federal agencies will look for opportunities to 

expand such programs throughout the country in collaboration with 

State, local, and tribal agencies. 

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to commend you again for your 

leadership in this area and for focusing the Subcommittee’s attention on these two innovative and promising approaches. I urge the 

Subcommittee to act on these proposals so we can address these 

issues this Congress. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schiff follows:]

34

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ADAM B. SCHIFF,

A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA


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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Are there questions for our colleague? 

If not, I would just recognize the presence of the gentleman from 

Illinois, Mr. Quigley, who has joined the panel. 

Thank you, Mr. Schiff. And we are going to hear the next panel, 

who will, I hope, say nice things about your bills. 

Mr. SCHIFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope so, too. 

Mr. SCOTT. If the second panel will come forward. 

The second panel will consist of five witnesses, and I will introduce them as they come forward. 

Our first witness will be Adam Gelb, who directs the Public Safety Performance Project at the Pew Center on the States. At Pew, 

Mr. Gelb works directly on justice reinvestment initiatives in various States. 

He previously worked for the Georgia Council on Substance 

Abuse and Georgia’s Governor’s Commission on Certainty in Sentencing; also for the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland and the U.S. 

Senate Judiciary Committee. 

He has earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. 

If all of our witnesses will come forward. 

Our second witness today is Chief Justice John Broderick of the 

New Hampshire Supreme Court. He has held this position since 

2004. He serves as the chair of the Leadership Group on Justice 

Reinvestment Initiatives in New Hampshire. 

Prior to his service on the bench, he was in private practice and 

served in various community service positions, including as a member of the board of directors of the National Legal Services Corporation. He is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and the 

University of Virginia Law School. 

The third witness is Representative Jerry Madden of the Texas 

House of Representatives. First elected in November 1992, he is 

now in his ninth term. He serves on various committees, including 

vice chair of the Committee on Corrections, which he chaired from 

2005 to 2009, and the Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee. 

He is a graduate from West Point, spent 6 years in the Army, 

and holds a master’s degree from the University of Texas at Dallas. 

Our next witness is Nancy La Vigne, director of the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where she works on justice reinvestment initiatives at the county level. Before being appointed as 

director, she served for 8 years as a senior research associate at the 

institute. 

She holds a bachelor’s degree from Smith College, a master’s 

from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. from the 

School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers. 

Our final witness will be Steven Alm of Hawaii’s First Circuit 

Court. He was sworn in as a judge in 2001. And, as I noted in my 

remarks, he formed the HOPE program in 2004. Prior to his judicial appointment, he served as a U.S. attorney for the District of 

Hawaii from November 1994 until April 2001. 

He received his law degree from the University of the Pacific and 

his master’s degree in education from the University of Oregon. 

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And we will begin with Mr. Gelb. 

TESTIMONY OF ADAM GELB, DIRECTOR, PUBLIC SAFETY PERFORMANCE PROJECT, PEW CENTER ON THE STATES, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. GELB. Thank you, Chairman Scott, Members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee today. 

As you said, my name is Adam Gelb. I am director of the Public 

Safety Performance Project at the Pew Center on the States. Our 

mission is to help States advance policies and practices in sentencing and corrections that protect public safety, hold offenders 

accountable, and control corrections costs. 

All of us at Pew applaud you for your leadership here, along with 

Representative Schiff, Representative Poe, and Representative 

Lungren, for your leadership in bringing these two bills to the public attention and moving them forward, because they really take 

aim at a common challenge: How can our Nation get a better return on its massive investment in public safety? 

And violent and career criminals need to be off the streets and 

behind bars and for a long time; there is no question about that. 

But over the past three decades, the United States, as you pointed 

out, Mr. Chairman, has built a prison system larger and more expensive than any other on the planet. 

When you look at the numbers, the way they were calculated 

there, you have these, sort of, hard-to-grasp calculations: 700, 500 

per 100,000. As we pointed out a couple years ago, when you take 

juveniles out of the equation and you just look at how many adults 

are in prison versus how many adults are in the population, you 

get one in 100. We have one in 100 adults in this country now behind bars. 

That is the equivalent of locking up every single adult in Miami, 

Florida; in Beaumont, Texas; in San Jose—we picked these cities 

at random—Miami; San Jose; Beaumont; Richmond, Virginia; 

Memphis, Tennessee; and Detroit, all the adults in those cities 

combined. That is 2.3 million adults in this country behind bars, 

one out of 100. 

You all have already gone over the costs extremely thoroughly 

here. Now more than $50 billion that States are spending; probably 

over $70 billion when you add in the Federal and local costs. 

I would just add here quickly that our ‘‘One in 31 Report’’ that 

you cited a little bit earlier tracked the cost of what we have been 

spending on probation versus prisons and how the cost of corrections overall has been extremely tilted toward prisons. In fact, that 

massive growth in overall corrections spending, almost 90 percent 

of that increased spending has gone to prisons, yet two-thirds of 

the growth in the correctional population over the last 25 years or 

so has been on probation. So probation is two-thirds of the growth 

and only about 10 percent of the funding increase. 

What have we gotten for all this money? Crime rates have fallen 

since the mid-1990’s, no question about it, and the research shows 

that prisons clearly can stake a modest part of the credit for that. 

But crime is still too high, and recidivism rates do not appear to 

have dropped. In fact, inmates leaving a State prison in this counVerDate 0ct 09 2002 18:42 Nov 04, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\051110\56393.000 HJUD1 PsN: 56393
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try these days probably have spent a few more months behind bars 

than they would have 25 years ago but they are just as likely to 

commit crime and return to crime when they come home. 

The good news is that we now have solutions, new strategies revealed by research that both cut crime and lower cost to taxpayers. 

The first is justice reinvestment. JR is an overall approach to State 

policy reform aimed at increasing public safety by cutting prison 

costs and reinvesting those savings into mandatory supervision and 

other alternatives that produce superior results. It was pioneered 

by the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center and has now 

been applied in a dozen States across the Nation. 

Texas, as we will hear from Representative Madden, probably 

provides the best example of the power of the justice reinvestment 

strategy. Texas is the very symbol of law and order in this country, 

and yet, 3 years ago, Texas leaders just said no to a proposal to 

build eight more prisons and, instead, took the billion dollars that 

they would have spent on prisons and spent about a quarter of that 

on building out a network of residential and community-based programs. 

Since 2007, Texas has reduced its prison population, it has reduced its corrections spending, and, most importantly, it has reduced the crime rate and recidivism rates all at the same time. So 

Texas has really proven that we can have less crime at a lower 

cost. 

Justice reinvestment works because it is bipartisan; because it is 

interbranch, it is an interbranch approach; and because it is driven 

by data; but also because its fundamental premise is that prisons 

are a government spending program, and, just like any other government spending program, they should be put to the cost-benefit 

test. 

The second strategy we are talking about today, HOPE, offers 

perhaps the most promising program model for cutting crime and 

costs. As you have outlined and Representative Schiff mentioned, 

more than 5 million people are on probation or parole in this country today, twice the number behind bars. They do consume as 

much as half of the hard drugs in this country—cocaine, heroin, 

and meth. 

And when they fail drug tests on probation or break other rules 

of community supervision, they land back in prison. In fact, parole 

and probation violators are a leading driver of prison admissions 

in this country, reaching almost two-thirds of prison admissions in 

some States. So if we even have a small impact on this population, 

we can have a huge, dramatic impact on crime and drug abuse and 

cost in this country. 

But HOPE’s success, as you have outlined, has been huge. In a 

gold standard evaluation, a randomized, controlled trial, as you 

have heard, HOPE probationers were compared to a control group. 

Arrests were down 55 percent, positive drug tests down 72 percent, 

and the number of days they spent in jail and prison were also 

down by half. So just imagine what the impact could be on crime 

and cost of victimization across this country if HOPE were brought 

to scale. 

The Federal role here is clear and compelling. These efforts may 

multiply on their own, and probably will to a certain extent, but 

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in the current economic environment widespread adoption is not 

likely. That means more business as usual—more crime, more victims, more arrests, more prosecutions, and still more incarceration. 

In conclusion, nearly 40 years ago prisons became America’s 

weapon of choice in the fight against crime. And there is no question that prisons have helped cut crime. But that is no longer the 

question at hand. The right question, the one that more and more 

budget-strapped States are asking is, what policies and programs 

would do a better job cutting crime and do it at a lower cost? 

HOPE probation and justice reinvestment offer potent answers. 

Dollar for dollar, Congress couldn’t make two better investments in 

public safety. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify with the Subcommittee today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gelb follows:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF ADAM GELB


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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

I forgot to mention the lighting device that is at the table. I 

would ask you to your confine your comments to 5 minutes, to the 

extent that you can. 

Justice Broderick? 


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TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOHN T. BRODERICK, JR., 

CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE SUPREME COURT, 

CONCORD, NH 

Justice BRODERICK. Chairman Scott, Congressman Poe, for the 

record, my name is John Broderick. I have the privilege to serve 

as the chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court and have 

done so since 2004. 

I appear before you today to speak in support of the Criminal 

Justice Reinvestment Act, which would enable more States like 

mine and local jurisdictions to utilize the kind of data-driven and 

bipartisan justice reinvestment process that New Hampshire has 

found to be so valuable. 

I would like to offer an account of the assistance New Hampshire 

has received over the last year, thanks to the support of the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Pew Center 

on the States, and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. 

Last year, the leadership of New Hampshire, all three branches 

of government—the Governor, the Senate President, the House 

Speaker, and myself—came together for a new approach to address 

the serious challenges facing our corrections system in New Hampshire. I joined with other State leaders to request this assistance 

because the costs of recidivism are too high, both in terms of lives 

and budgets, and because it is long past time to begin bending the 

cost and public safety curves back toward less spending and better 

outcomes. 

New Hampshire was facing many challenges. Over the last decade—and our State, by the way, has a population of only 1.3 million people—over the past decade, our State’s prison population 

had increased 31 percent and spending on corrections had doubled 

to over $100 million. To give you a benchmark of sorts, New Hampshire spends only $76 million a year on the court system. The recidivism rate in New Hampshire had increased dramatically over 

the previous 10 years and was above the national average. 

Unless New Hampshire took action, independent estimates suggested that our prison population would otherwise soon increase by 

another 11 percent at a cost of $179 million in construction and operations. 

The Council of State Governments’ Justice Center provided technical assistance and real expertise, allowing us to fully investigate 

the root causes of the growth of our corrections system and to establish a process to begin, together with State leaders from both 

parties and stakeholders from across the criminal justice spectrum, 

to review the analysis they produced. 

Over a period of several months, a working group chaired by the 

attorney general, composed of all three branches of government, 

myself included, as well as representatives of county government 

and the public at large, carefully reviewed the analysis presented 

by the Justice Center. 

The process revealed, surprisingly to us, that 57 percent—57 percent—of the people admitted to our State prison in the previous 

year had not committed a new crime; rather, they failed to comply 

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their being incarcerated. The vast majority of those individuals reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 18:42 Nov 04, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\051110\56393.000 HJUD1 PsN: 56393
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turned to jail or went to jail for the first time on a probation violation because of drug or alcohol abuse. 

Despite significant growth in the probation and parole population, the number of offices supervising the population had been 

stable. Caseloads had risen, and we did not have the right tools to 

hold those folks accountable. And so the default position, sadly, is: 

revoke their probation, revoke their parole, send them to prison at 

$32,000 a year. It is a failed system. It doesn’t make any sense. It 

didn’t make any sense to us. 

Relying upon data analysis and stakeholder input, the working 

group endorsed a set of pragmatic policy options that policymakers 

and stakeholders across the criminal justice system in my State 

embraced. They included increased supervision for those most likely to re-offend; not to treat everyone the same; new tools for probation and parole officers to hold offenders accountable when they 

failed to play by the rules in their communities; and expanded access to substance abuse and, I want to underscore, mental health 

treatment. 

In my State, in the 1980’s, we were rated number one in the 

United States in mental health services in the community. We are 

now rated somewhere around 38th in America. It is no surprise to 

me that the jails have shown the increase. 

The policy framework we were provided has turned into bipartisan legislation—bipartisan legislation—in a time when bipartisanship is almost extinct. And that legislation was recently approved by both houses of our legislature with overwhelming support. For New Hampshire, this will mean safer communities with 

lower recidivism, cost savings for the State and counties, and saved 

lives and saved families. 

Over the next 4 years, our State is on track to save between $7 

million and $10 million. I know that must not sound like a lot of 

money in this city, but in my State of New Hampshire, where the 

budget is in stress, I can assure you it is a lot of money. 

The most important changes, however, are that lives, people can 

be restored through effective treatment and appropriate supervision and that increased public safety will follow lower recidivism 

rates, as has shown to be true in Texas and Kansas. 

It is my belief, 22 years as a lawyer, 15 years as an appellate 

judge, and the belief of many in my State who have been involved 

in this effort through the justice reinvestment initiative, that other 

States and local jurisdictions would benefit greatly, would benefit 

greatly, from the additional resources that would be made available 

under this act to help them secure access to data, which we needed 

so desperately, and to reduce taxpayer spending. 

As I said, in New Hampshire I think we have reached the point 

in American society on this issue where good social policy and good 

economics have finally intersected. And I encourage you to pass 

this legislation. It is a powerful tool for change, and the status quo 

is not working. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Justice Broderick follows:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN T. BRODERICK, JR.


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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Representative Madden? 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JERRY MADDEN,

TEXAS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, PLANO, TX 

Mr. MADDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Judge Poe, Mr. Quigley. 

It is good to be here today. 


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I am the rookie in this group. There is a lot of years of experience up here. My years in criminal justice didn’t start—I was a 

member of the legislature for 12 years, had never had a criminal 

justice bill in my background. I am not a lawyer. I was not involved 

in the criminal justice system. I am an engineer by background. 

And, in doing that, I had no experience until the Speaker calls 

me in ine day and says, ‘‘You are chairman of corrections.’’ And, of 

course, I look over and, as you always do to the Speaker, you say, 

‘‘Thank you, Mr. Speaker.’’ And under my breath, I am saying, ‘‘Oh, 

God, why me? What did I do to deserve this.’’

But I then ask him, I said, ‘‘Well, what do you want me to do, 

Mr. Speaker?’’ And he told me one thing; he said, ‘‘Don’t build new 

prisons. They cost too much.’’ And that is what started Texas down 

this road, because I had never heard of what you would call justice 

reinvestment now, but we started looking at those kinds of things. 

I looked at it as an engineer. Simple project. I can’t build any 

more of these; I have a block, it is this big. I can’t do anything, I 

can’t build anymore. I have people coming into that, I have people 

going out of it. I can tell you, in Texas, to control that population, 

if I had more coming in, it looked like we were having more coming 

in, it was not going to be a satisfactory solution to open the doors 

and let them out. So, at that stage, we had to figure out, well, what 

can I do, and started looking at how do I at least do something 

about the input? 

Fortunately, we had some people working from our department 

of corrections, particularly in our areas that do probation, in our 

probation departments, and they had looked at probation and had 

some good information that they started off with. And they had an 

idea of how cost worked and things like that, how they could do 

some savings, how many people were coming in and out of probation and how many were coming back in for revocations of probation, et cetera. 

That was my starting point. So I had to start looking at cost, I 

had to start looking at programs, and I looked basically at how this 

whole system worked, looking at this whole equation of incoming 

and outgo. And basically I had a system that had 157,000 people 

in it. We have about 72,000 people come into the system every 

year, into the prisons, and about 72,000 leave every year. 

But we had this recycling going on, obviously people coming 

back, this thing called recidivism, returned people coming back. 

What were we doing? And I started looking at, well, what were the 

alternatives? 

Fortunately, in Texas, we had a couple of groups that are think 

tanks. One is a very conservative think tank, our Texas Public Policy Foundation, and we have a Criminal Justice Policy Council that 

is a much more liberal think tank. And we had them in, and we 

were looking at a probation bill. 

I fortunately had found on the Senate side a senator who knew 

a lot about the criminal justice system. His name is John 

Whitmire. He happened to be the opposite party that I am, but he 

was the Chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. And 

I will tell you, he knows more about what goes on in the prisons 

in Texas than probably any other legislator does or probably ever 

will. He knows more than I do. 

54

But we had certain things that he looked at. He came up with 

a probation bill that I had to do some major modifications on, because it wasn’t going to pass my side of the House unless we did 

some major things. We came within one vote of passing that bill 

that time, and that was the Governor’s. But we fortunately had 

learned a lot about what the process was. 

Because when we came in in our 2007 legislative session, we had 

a projection from our Legislative Budget Board that said we were 

going to need 17,000 new prison beds. Remember, my boss had told 

me, ‘‘Don’t build new prisons,’’ and I got a forecast that says I need 

17,000 more of them. What could we do differently? 

And that is when we had looked at—in the interim, we had 

looked at what are the alternatives that were out there. That is 

when I got to meet people like Adam Gelb and like Mike Thompson 

from the Council of State Governments and so many of the other 

people around here that are around this table. They would come in, 

and I started learning that they were out there, they had some 

wonderful ideas, some great ideas, and we started putting them together. 

And in that period of time just before that session, we basically 

came up with the ideas of the things that Texas could do. We had 

fortunately had some researchers and had done some things in 

Texas previously that had proved to have worked. We just didn’t 

have enough of them, we didn’t have enough people involved in 

them, and we needed to expand those resources. 

We did that. That was the great thing that we did. We basically 

did not invent a new program. We took and added to. We found 

those things that would break the cycle, because we looked at 

breaking the cycle of people in the prison system in five different 

places. I looked at those people who were leaving on parole, and 

we did some things in parole. I looked at what happened in the 

prison systems so that we could make a difference on the programs 

that were there and making sure that the people had the right programs they needed so that we could change their minds and their 

hearts. 

We looked at the probation side and tried to see, well, what else 

can we do to reinforce probation and the work they were doing and 

giving additional resources to our judges and our other people that 

are in the system at that stage. And that is where we did things 

like—we are going to hear about some of the additional specialty 

courts that are out there. We did some, obviously, reenforcement 

in those specialty courts and public funding. 

We looked at breaking the cycle in the schools, because you have 

this pathway to prison that is out there that people get on, and 

how do you break that. And I looked even younger and saw all 

those things that we could do. 

We actually put those to work in our funding bill; we actually 

passed them in that. We actually thought it was going to work. I 

will tell you, there are some things that need to be given to a legislator like myself to give us the standing that we can and the support that we need. 

First of all, we need data. As an engineer, I didn’t have enough 

data. There were some of these things that we were wandering on 

with a prayer that they were going to work. There is research that 

55

is needed, additional research. Every bit of that helps; every bit can 

do some good things for us. And we can’t do all of that within our 

own resources. 

And there are some good research that is done outside of our own 

particular State. We needed the dissemination of that information—gosh, it is hard to get—what really works, what actually 

makes a difference, and what can save the State money. 

Because I found that this was a great tool for both my—it was 

a truly bipartisan legislation. Because for my Democratic, liberal 

friends, it made a lot of sense to do things about people. It helped 

people. It changed lives. And for my conservative friends, it saved 

money. And you know what? We did both. In Texas, we did them 

both. And so, there are reasons to say that this is truly a bipartisan piece, because it works. It does work to do all of those things. 

Each State is different. I have learned that in the last 2 years, 

because I am now the chairman of the Council of State Governments, on their board. I am the chairman of National Conference 

of State Legislators’ Law and Criminal Justice Committee. I am 

the chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Corrections 

and Re-Entry Committee, just because of all the stuff we started 

doing in Texas. 

And the message that we have to the various States is: You have 

to do it yourself. You have to do what your system allows you to 

do. But in preaching that message to each of the States and learning what they can do, there is a great deal of innovation that is 

going on out there, a great deal of demonstrations and projects that 

are working, like the judge’s program in Hawaii, that can, in fact, 

be implemented in other States that do make a big difference. 

And I thank the Committee. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Madden follows:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JERRY MADDEN


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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Dr. La Vigne? 


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TESTIMONY OF NANCY G. LA VIGNE, Ph.D., DIRECTOR, JUSTICE POLICY CENTER, THE URBAN INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC 

Ms. LA VIGNE. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, 

thank you for the opportunity to speak today about the justice reinvestment and HOPE initiative bills under consideration by this 

Committee. 

I am director of the Justice Policy Center at The Urban Institute, 

where we have engaged in extensive research on the impact of correctional policies on individuals, communities, and State and county budgets. In the course of conducting that research, we have spoken with State and local government leaders who strongly desire 

guidance on the most efficient strategies for allocating their scarce 

and often diminishing criminal justice resources in an effort to improve public safety. It is this appetite for a more effective criminal 

justice system that makes justice reinvestment, the HOPE project, 

and similar models so compelling. 

As has been well-documented, most States, counties, and cities 

are grappling with burgeoning criminal justice populations. While 

recent statistics indicate that some States have experienced their 

first declines in prison populations in many years, other States’ 

populations continue to grow. 

But I believe I am here today to share the local context. And the 

truth is that local governments are in a similar, if not more dire, 

predicament. City and county governments have experienced a 30 

percent increase in the number of people in jail or under criminal 

justice supervision in the past 10 years alone. 

The escalation in these local criminal justice populations has 

been accompanied by an 80 percent spike in county correctional 

costs in the last decade, with most of these expenses driven by jail 

costs. These costs create difficult choices for public officials, many 

of whom are forced to freeze or reduce spending on education and 

human services to balance their budgets. In effect, jail population 

growth can divert funds from programs and social services aimed 

at preventing people from entering the criminal justice system in 

the first place. 

So, what can city and county managers do to control these costs 

without compromising public safety? They can engage in justice reinvestment, a process designed for public officials who want to 

rethink how they allocate resources throughout their criminal justice and social services systems. This process is for leaders who are 

aiming not just to contain criminal justice costs but also to achieve 

a greater public safety benefit with current resources. 

Justice reinvestment can help prioritize jail space for those who 

pose the greatest risk to public safety, while also guiding which individuals will be better off in the community, where services and 

treatment may be more readily available. Justice reinvestment can 

also help achieve substantial cost savings by expediting the case 

processing of those awaiting trial or disposition, revising probation 

policies, creating more alternatives to jail for unsentenced populations, and preventing jail residents from returning by increasing 

re-entry preparation and services both before and after their release. 

63

The Urban Institute is working with three counties on justice reinvestment projects: Alachua County, Florida; Allegheny County, 

Pennsylvania; and Travis County, Texas. To date, the sites have 

collected and analyzed data to help understand what drives their 

criminal justice costs. 

In Alachua County, our analyses found that 85 percent of jail detainees are unsentenced. This led local officials to re-examine the 

bail-bonding process, the use of bond reduction hearings, and the 

effectiveness of pretrial diversion programs. 

In Travis County, analyses revealed that frequent jailed residents make up slightly less than one-third of the jail population 

but account for over two-thirds of jail bed use. Many of these repeat residents are chronic inebriants, leading officials to explore 

the development of a sobriety center as a less expensive and potentially more effective alternative to jail incarceration. 

Allegheny County also identified a high proportion of repeat jail 

residents. Many have extensive histories of substance addiction, 

which prompted county decision-makers to create a goal of developing more substance abuse treatment beds in the jail and ensure 

that the jail is operating within its recommended capacity. 

Now, The Urban Institute’s work with these sites has been supported with a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau 

of Justice Statistics. The grant covers the cost of Urban Institute 

staff in providing data analysis and technical assistance, but it 

does not support the staff time and other costs incurred by the 

sites. The ‘‘Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act’’ would therefore 

provide greatly needed resources to these sites and to other State, 

local, and tribal jurisdictions to help manage the growth in spending on corrections and increased public safety. 

In this time of shrinking budgets and increasing demands on the 

criminal justice system, the ‘‘Justice Reinvestment Act’’ and the 

complementary ‘‘HOPE Initiative Act’’ hold promise in helping jurisdictions manage and allocate scarce resources cost-effectively, 

generating savings that can be reinvested in more prevention-oriented strategies. In doing so, justice reinvestment can yield benefits for communities affected by crime, as well as for jurisdictions 

whose budgets arestrained by increases in the criminal justice population. 

Thank you for your time. This concludes my formal statement. 

I welcome any questions you may have later. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. La Vigne follows:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF NANCY G. LA VIGNE


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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Judge Alm? 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE STEVEN S. ALM, JUDGE, SECOND DIVISION, CIRCUIT COURT OF THE FIRST JUDICIAL 

CIRCUIT, HONOLULU, HI 

Judge ALM. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Members of the 

Committee. I am Judge Steven Alm. I am thrilled to be able to 

come here and testify about HOPE probation. 

Over the last several years, I have worked with a group of dedicated public servants—State workers, city workers, Federal workers—who are working smarter and harder to make our probation 

system work better. And research is showing that we have cut arrests for new crimes, use of drugs, missed appointments, and getting sent to prison by more than half. 

This is not a miracle. This can be done everywhere. It takes coordination, it takes a will, and it takes an ability to put all the 

pieces together. It is a simple idea in concept; it is a little bit of 

a challenge to put together in reality. 

By way of background, I am a State felony trial judge. Murders, 

rapes, robberies, thefts, drugs are the standard fare. I think I come 

from the Judge Poe school: The violent and dangerous and those 

who won’t stop stealing have to go to prison, often for a very long 

period of time. 

But most of the people in court are going to get put on probation, 

and we have got to do a better job of supervising them on probation. 

When I started on this calendar in June of 2004, I could tell the 

probation system was broken. I would get motions to revoke probations from the probation officer with 10, 20, 30 individual violations 

of probation, and now the person was getting referred back to 

court. The PO had worked with them, threatened, cajoled them, 

whatever, until they had a good argument for revocation; and 99 

times out of 100, the probation officer would be recommending to 

me, Send this person to prison, they are not amenable to probation; 

and I just thought there has got to be a better way to work this. 

This took hours on the PO’s part, and we weren’t getting a good 

result. 

So I thought to myself: this is a crazy way to try to change anybody’s behavior, and I thought: What would work? I thought: What 

did I do as a father with my kid when he was younger? You tell 

him what not to do, how to behave; then if he violates that, if he 

misbehaves, you give him a consequence immediately. That is how 

we were raised. That is how we learned to tie together bad behavior with a consequence, and then you don’t do it again. 

So I thought: How can I do that to provide swift, certain and proportionate consequences to the probation system? I knew, if you 

bring people to work together, that can happen, so I brought together court staff, probation, prosecution, defense, the courts, jails, 

the sheriffs, police—everybody working together to make this happen swiftly. 

First, we identified the highest risk probationers. As we have 

learned from research, if you focus on the highest risk folks—those 

convicted of violent crimes or who have violent histories, drug ofVerDate 0ct 09 2002 18:42 Nov 04, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00073 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\051110\56393.000 HJUD1 PsN: 56393
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fenders, property offenders—and we have about a third of each—

they are the most likely to fail and the most likely to go to prison. 

Secondly, in one of these meetings, the public defender said to 

me, You know, Judge, the rules are going to be the same, but you 

are actually enforcing them for the first time. Can you, like, warn 

our guys about this? So we thought that made sense. 

Next, we thought: How do we monitor people more closely? We 

set up a drug test hotline. Every weekday morning, the offenders 

are supposed to call the hotline to find out if they have to come into 

the courthouse that day for a drug test. It is going to come up at 

least once a week, maybe 2 days in a row. One of the offenders told 

me, I don’t smoke meth anymore because every night I’m worried 

I’m going to get tested tomorrow, go to jail tomorrow. It just ruined 

the high, so I stopped. 

Now, you know, when they come in for these drug tests, these 

are observed urine tests. So I had one young lady. She had a little 

vial strapped to her rear end. She tried to substitute it for the test. 

She got caught, so when she came to court, I gave her more time 

in jail for tampering, but I also told her, Young lady, you are going 

to have to get some new friends because that sample was dirty, too. 

Fourth, the probation officers have to act immediately. So they 

lose discretion with this. If there is a violation, they have to get the 

person into custody. If they come in and test dirty, they get arrested on the spot. Sheriffs take them into custody; they go to jail; 

we come back 2 days later for a hearing, and that has to happen 

very quickly. Law enforcement traditionally gives low priority to 

warrant service. 

As former U.S. Attorney, we set up a HIDTA. I talked to the 

HIDTA director, then the U.S. marshal. The U.S. marshal agreed 

to serve warrants for my courtroom. HIDTA pays the overtime; and 

then we have got to make sure this happens within 2 days. So the 

hearings typically happen 2 days later. 

On October 1, we had the warning hearing. I told the offenders, 

you are on probation because you are not in prison. You are making a deal with me you are going to follow the rules of probation. 

So, from now on, if you use drugs, you go to jail. If you miss an 

appointment, you go to jail. We are trying to create a culture of responsibility. So, even if you screw up but come in and turn yourself 

in, I am going to that into account in what my sanction is; but if 

you decide, I am going to go to jail anyway, I might as well go 

party and hang out with the boys and wait for law enforcement to 

get me, I am going to give you a bunch of more time. 

Now, we thought we would have a lot of hearings. We started 

with 34 people on October 1 of 2004. We only had three hearings 

the following week, two hearings the week after that. I have only 

had five contested hearings in the last 41⁄2 years. The typical hearing is 71⁄2-minutes long. That is why we can handle a lot of cases, 

and it is because the offenders admit to it. It is something that 

happened a few days ago, and they know they are going to go to 

jail for some days or maybe some weeks, not for years. 

HOPE has grown from 34 offenders 51⁄2 years ago. We now have 

more than 1,500 in the program, including 1,350 of the 8,000 felons 

on Oahu. That is one out of six. The police department has stepped 

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up. Now they are serving 90 percent of the warrants. We are trying 

to target those most likely to fail. 

As has been described, Dr. Hawken did a randomized control 

trial study: 74 percent fewer arrests, 72 percent less likely to test 

positive for drugs, 61 percent less likely to miss an appointment. 

The biggest numbers are 55 percent less likely to get arrested for 

a new crime, which has led to a 48 percent reduction in bed days. 

Dr. Hawken testified at our house finance committee in Hawaii a 

month ago that that has led to a current savings of between $4,000 

and $8,000 per HOPE probationer. 

So Nevada started their program in January. Oregon started 

their program in March. Arizona, Alaska, Virginia are getting organized and are ready to go. This is one of those true, rare win-win 

propositions in law enforcement. Crime victimization is cut by more 

than half. It is good for offenders and their families because it 

keeps them out of prison, and it saves the taxpayers millions of dollars. So we are going to start slowly with all the States. What this 

bill could do is get this revolution going across the entire country. 

We could save millions of dollars. 

I thank you for inviting me to address you, and I will be happy 

to answer any questions that you have. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Judge Alm follows:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEVEN S. ALM


Alm-1.eps
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Alm-2.eps
74


Alm-3.eps
75


Alm-4.eps
76


Alm-5.eps
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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you very much. I want to thank all of our witnesses for their testimony. We will now ask questions under the 

same 5-minute rule. 

Mr. Gelb, you referred to the one out of a 100 study, which also, 

I believe, had a point in there that any incarceration rate over 500 

was actually counterproductive. 

Can you explain what that meant? 


Alm-6.eps
78

Mr. GELB. Sure. Actually, it was not our study. We cited some 

research in that report that found that when you take so many 

people, particularly males, out of a community, there are devastating effects on that community. So there is some research that 

shows that you can have crime control effects in particular neighborhoods. Increasing incarceration will produce public safety up to 

a point, but then when you start to reach past that point in that 

neighborhood, you will actually cause—should I go ahead? Thank 

you—you actually take some of the steam out of that community 

that it further deteriorates. 

Mr. SCOTT. Justice Broderick, you indicated you saved $7 to $10 

million. How did you calculate that? 

Justice BRODERICK. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman. I couldn’t hear 

you. 

Mr. SCOTT. You indicated that New Hampshire saved $7 to $10 

million. How did you calculate the savings? 

Justice BRODERICK. Well, the idea is that if we act more intelligently than we have, I think, historically, with probation and parole, we will keep fewer people coming back to prison. 

In my State—and I think it is true around the United States—

I was speaking to the warden of our women’s prison one day who 

had spent her life on probation and parole; and she said, ‘‘Judge, 

you know, one of the problems is that we have too many people to 

watch and too few people watching them, and so we incentivize a 

prompt and quick solution, which, sadly, is send them to jail;’’ and 

she said, ‘‘Probation and parole has become like police on the side 

of the highway catching speeders. We need to be more thoughtful 

about it.’’

And so I think, if we focus there—that is the goal—we would 

have better outcomes. 

And then, as the Chair pointed out, the goal would be to reinvest 

the savings because, in my view, without reinvesting the savings 

you haven’t done your job, particularly in the area of mental illness, which is something I am very interested in, and there are 

more people in our jails and prisons with mental illness than there 

are in mental health facilities across the United States. It is a disgrace and, more importantly, it is an expensive disgrace. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Representative Madden, you indicated that the programs that 

you have proposed not only reduce crime but save money. Unfortunately, there are those who are interested in reducing crime and 

taking care of people, and there are those who are for saving 

money. There is another little group over here that we have to deal 

with, and that is those who do their research by taking a poll, and 

if you sound tough and something scores well, even though it 

wastes money and increases the crime rate, if it scores well in a 

poll, they will vote for the ‘‘continue business as usual’’ and not 

make the ‘‘reduce crime/save money’’ choice. 

What can we do to change the dynamics so that a bill that will 

reduce crime and save money can actually pass? 

Mr. MADDEN. That is the nice part, Mr. Chairman, of what we 

actually did in Texas by working on a bipartisan level, and we 

worked it through our appropriations cycle also. 

79

I will tell you we now have a great deal of believers that we have 

had success because what has happened to our crime rate and our 

prison population is, as Judge Poe has pointed out—or asked the 

question about how many did we have—we had 157,000 at one 

time in the prisons of Texas. We are down, as I said, to about the 

153,950 number, and it looks like our projections would indicate 

that that is going to continue to go lower. That is a clear indication 

to all of our legislative friends that what we have done has been 

successful, and those kinds of things are actually working to save 

us money. 

So how do you go back in and put that out to your people? 

The people are pretty smart out there. You ask them about the 

criminal justice system now, and I will tell you that, going into almost any group that I have ever gone into, I have asked them specifically: Do they know people that were involved or have been involved in criminal justice? And almost without fail, many of them 

will tell you that they were family members or somebody they went 

to school with. And you ask them about the type of person they are 

or were, and you will find out, well, some of them were the very 

bad guys, as we have pointed out, that needed to be locked up and 

the key thrown away. There are a lot of those others that have 

made mistakes; they have done stupid things; they have done 

dumb things. 

And somehow or another, with the types of programs and many 

things that we are doing, can we change their minds? Can we 

change their values? Can we change their hearts? Can we change 

them as a person? And many of them you can’t, and that is the 

numbers thing. Texas is big. You know, we did a lot of things that 

were faith-based about numbers because it is not going to work 

every time. It doesn’t, and you are going to have to deal with those 

situations like the one that came up in Connecticut here a year or 

so ago with their parole system; but the reality is, if the citizens 

know that what we are doing is, in fact, intelligent and a wise utilization of their revenues, you are doing three things as a State, 

okay? 

First of all, you are providing public safety. Second of all, you are 

making wise use of the money; and third, you are doing what a Department of Corrections is supposed to do, which is correct behavior. If you are doing those things, then you, in fact, are doing what 

you are supposed to be doing. 

Mr. SCOTT. You indicated a slight reduction in prisons before you 

changed directions. What were the projections? 

Mr. MADDEN. The projections were 17,000 more people by 2012, 

which would put me at about 167,000 to 170,000 people that we 

had in the prison system. 

We have also seen a reduction in the number of people that are 

actually on probation, and we have seen the parole revocations 

drop significantly in the State in the last 2 years also with those 

kinds of things, with the programmatic things that we are doing. 

And I think the chief justice talked about the importance of mental health. I mean, obviously, working in the mental health system, 

there is lots of things that we can do in research and data that specifically makes a difference in the mental health fields. We can also 

do that with alcoholism. 

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We have over 5,500 people in the prisons of Texas that are there 

because of multiple DWIs. If you can keep them from going back 

to drinking, which I am not sure you can—you know, in fact, I 

know you can’t always do, but there are things that do keep some 

people from—that will make them stop drinking. If they do that, 

how dangerous are they? How afraid of them are we? 

We have two types of people, I think, that we ought to look at—

one that we should be afraid of and the others that we are mad 

at—and that is what our system has, and I have got three types 

of prisoners. I have got prisoners that will always come back no 

matter what we do with them. I have got prisoners in the prisons 

who will probably never come back—the Martha Stewarts of the 

world—and I have got people in the middle that depend on what 

we do that I call the swingers. Make a difference in them, and if 

you can change them, that is when the system changes. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Judge Poe. 

Mr. POE. I thank all of y’all for being here. I am a great believer 

in trying new methods to get the attention of people who violate 

the law. When I was on the bench, I tried everything possible with 

probationers. In fact, I had people ask me to send them to prison 

rather than me put them on probation or ‘‘Poe-bation,’’ as they 

called it; but I had a low recidivism rate, and it is because of the 

philosophy that all of y’all are talking about. 

We send people to prison. To me, prison just keeps people away 

from the rest of us. Prison doesn’t really correct anybody. It just 

keeps them away from us. Probation sometimes hasn’t been used 

as, I think, it obviously can be. It seems, if it is used correctly, it 

can instill a person to have personal responsibility for what they 

are doing, and then there are consequence. When they are on probation, if they test positive for drugs or they are not working or 

they are not going to school or they are not supporting their family, 

whatever it is, then there is an immediate, an immediate consequence, and they are still on probation. 

So I really like that philosophy. I think it has worked in the past. 

I have one concern, though. 

Dr. La Vigne, I don’t know why you picked Travis County—that 

is Austin—and their logo is ‘‘Keep Austin weird.’’ Any town that 

has that, you know, is kind of an anomaly in the State of Texas. 

Anyway, I think the statistics do bear out that it creates the results that we want in the criminal justice system: instilling personal responsibility, a lower recidivism rate, a better cost for the 

taxpayers, and of course we hold people accountable and there are 

consequences for their actions. 

As I mentioned when I started, sentencing must mean something. It has got to mean something to the victim, to the defendant, 

and to the public at large. So I commend all of you on your work. 

I do have one concern, though. 

Every sentence is imposed by a judge, and we have got all kinds 

of judges in this country, and that is all I will say about that; but 

I want to ask the two judges—the trial judge and appellate judge—

and the chief justice: How do we get judges to do these things rather than just say—you know, when a person comes back in with a 

violation of probation, they don’t do anything. Go and send them 

81

more. Then we have got the others who, when you got one little 

mistake while you are on probation, here comes the gavel and off 

to the ‘‘do right’’ hotel with you, you know. 

So how do we get judges to buy into doing this to instill personal 

responsibility for people on probation and have the graduated system of probation and consequences? Suggestions? 

Chief Justice, I will ask you, and then Judge Alm will be second. 

Justice BRODERICK. I guess what I would say about my State is 

that, I think, given the numbers we have seen, judges may be overzealous on revoking probation, and I think part of the problem, 

Congressman, is that there are few graduated places to go. It is either/or sadly. It also helps when you have a State which would be 

the size of a county in Texas and a statewide newspaper that 

watches closely. So I think that helps, too, but I think the tragedy 

in my State, which is a cost driver, is that we don’t have many options. 

Let me give you a very brief example, if I could, which the head 

of our Department of Corrections laments when he tells it, but I 

think it makes the point. 

He said there was a woman who was on parole from the women’s 

prison in New Hampshire. She had found a job, she was going to 

school, and she had two children that she was caring for. And one 

of the conditions of her parole was that she not write a letter to 

the father of the children, who was at the time incarcerated in the 

men’s prison in Concord. And she wrote a letter, and so they said, 

You violated a condition of your parole. You are going back to prison. The kids went to foster care, she lost her job, she lost her 

chance for education. And at the end of the day, every citizen in 

New Hampshire who drove home, if they had known those facts, 

would not be safer or smarter than they had been. There has to 

be some option. 

It is not a question, I don’t think, of being tough on crime. I don’t 

think any sensible person would be other than that, but I think we 

have had a deficit in being intelligent on crime, and failure is very 

expensive. We need graduated and immediate—I agree with the 

judge from Hawaii—which we don’t now have. That would make a 

huge impact. It is obviously making a huge impact in Hawaii. 

Mr. POE. Judge, your last comment, if it is permissible, Mr. 

Chairman, how do we get judges to buy into this? 

Judge ALM. Well, when we started in Hawaii, it was just in my 

courtroom. We expanded to all 10 judges. Not surprisingly, some of 

my colleagues were not really thrilled about doing this philosophically—it took more work—but there was no operator effect. The 

judges did give sanctions, and they got the same results I did. 

I think the way the legislation is set up it will help to accomplish 

this. It will set up for 20 pilot sites in a competitive bidding process. They are going to have to set up a proposal, get people organized and agree to follow the routine in order to do that. They have 

asked me to be of assistance to help work with the other judges in 

doing this, and I will absolutely do that. 

We have done that with Nevada so far, with Oregon. I have met 

with those judges. We have talked about it. Some of the time it is 

going to take that kind of face-to-face contact and explanation and 

discussion, but when they see the results we are getting—and that 

82

is the message. If you hope to get the results we are getting, you 

have got to follow through with it, and I think it doesn’t hurt if you 

get a judge who has a somewhat tough reputation because then 

people will know you are not kidding around, and when you send 

people to jail each and every time, it isn’t the fact of the length of 

it; it is the fact that it happens, and that is what we have found 

so far. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Judge Alm, it is swift and certain and not length; is that right? 

The deterrent effect is if it happens swiftly and certainly? 

Judge ALM. Absolutely. 

Mr. SCOTT. What is the additional cost of intensive probation as 

opposed to regular haphazard probation? 

Judge ALM. Regular probation costs about $1,000 per person per 

year. HOPE adds another $1,000—so it is a total of about $2,000—

and we use most of that for drug treatment dollars. We have been 

getting $1.2 million from our legislature for the last 5 years. We 

use $770,000 for drug treatment dollars. 

Mr. SCOTT. And have you calculated the reduction in the recidivism and how much you save in a $15,000-, $20,000-, $30,000-ayear incarceration as opposed to the $1,000 extra probation? 

Judge ALM. Well, as Dr. Hawken says, we have between $4,000 and $8,000 per, and we now have 1,350 felons in this. So, as we 

keep expanding this—and our legislature has passed a resolution 

to have our paroling authority set up a HOPE parole project. We 

volunteered to help them do that. I want to get pretrial done as 

well. If we get the whole system going, I am convinced we can reduce our prison population by a third. 

Mr. SCOTT. And one of the things about investing in prevention 

is that no one has any upfront money, and if you can figure out 

a way to get the thing jump-started and calculate the savings and 

reinvest the savings, you can keep the program going. 

Dr. La Vigne, how accurate can you ascertain who saved the 

money? In other words, if you are going after some savings, we 

know that Corrections is going to save some money and that other 

agencies will save money, and the idea is to recapture some of this 

money. 

In Pennsylvania, they calculated—they saved over five times 

more than they actually spent. They spent in comprehensive programs about $60 million. They looked back, and they had saved 

$300 million—about 5-1. So, if we can get whoever is saving the 

money to kick back in 20 to 30 percent, not all of what they saved 

but 20 or 30 percent of what they saved, most of these programs 

can continue on the reinvested savings, but they didn’t have the 

money to begin with, so nothing ever starts. 

Ms. LA VIGNE. Right. 

Mr. SCOTT. The question is: How accurate can you allocate the 

savings so you know who ought to be anteing up some reinvestment? 

Ms. LA VIGNE. Right. I think that depends a lot on the nature 

of the intervention, what you are doing to achieve those savings. 

So, in the case of Texas, they deliberately decided not to build 

more prisons. They had the plans in the works, as I understand it, 

83

so they knew how much that would cost and the savings that came 

from that. 

The same goes with the county level. A lot of counties now, because of jail overcrowding, are looking at the only option open to 

them, which is to expand their existing jails or to build new jails, 

so they can identify savings there. 

But I also think that Judge Alm has a good example there in 

terms of the fact that we know that a certain share of these people 

would end up behind bars, be it jail or prison; and through the 

work of Dr. Hawken, I think we can easily identify the savings associated with that. I don’t know if she has done that kind of rigorous analysis, but it is possible. We do a lot of that kind of costbenefit work at the Urban Institute. So then the question is: 

Who saves the money, right? And then how do we know—do we 

dip into those coffers and say, ‘‘Okay. Well, you would have spent 

this much this year so it needs to go somewhere else’’? And I think 

those are issues we are still struggling with on justice reinvestment. 

Mr. SCOTT. I think Representative Madden would show if you 

have a line item for that budget and their expenses just went 

down——

Ms. LA VIGNE. Well, that is an easy one. 

Mr. SCOTT. You save $17,000 with fewer prisoners? How much 

does Texas spend per prisoner? 

Mr. MADDEN. It was $17,000. Right now, we spend somewhere 

between $42 and $45 per day per prisoner. That is about $16,500—

it depends on whose numbers you take. It is about $16,500 per 

prisoner per year. So, if you reduce the prison, now, you know, 

those are nice figures to throw out. We know, for example, if you 

have one prisoner less, you don’t save just that number; it is something less than that. But if you add them all together in bigger 

numbers, then those numbers really do work. 

Mr. SCOTT. But, if you are talking $17,000, it is not just one 

extra, which you could absorb, but you are talking about building 

new prisons. 

Mr. MADDEN. I had the estimate of seven to eight significant 

units that we would have to build. The building cost on those were 

estimated by our legislative budget people at somewhere between 

$250 and $300 million each. 

Mr. SCOTT. Before you started operating them? 

Mr. MADDEN. Before you started operating. 

The budget had in it that year about $540 million to build three 

of those new prisons. It was sort of the perfect storm that I ran 

into because, when we did all our estimates and looked at all our 

programs and looked at the number of beds we needed and everything else, it came out to be significantly less cost than that would 

have been, but it was a cost. It is there now. 

I will tell you I am working on the American Legislative Exchange Conference, and we are looking at some model legislation, 

and when you look to get the initial cost savings that you might 

be able to get first, it would be some places in the probation programs that you could specifically show reductions in cost. 

84

Mr. SCOTT. Another thing to do would be to enact programs like 

the two bills that are pending now to jump-start so that you can 

start saving the money——

Mr. MADDEN. Absolutely. 

Mr. SCOTT [continuing]. So that you don’t have to come up with 

it out of a budget that is already too tight. You jump-start it, but 

get people around the table to say, Look, as you save money, you 

are going to have to reinvest it, that is what keeps the programs 

going. 

Mr. MADDEN. If you have things like specific courts, like Judge 

Alm was talking about, if you do things for a mental health court 

or if you do things for a veterans court or if you do things for, you 

know, specific courts like Judge Alm has in HOPE court, with 

starting those, you can very quickly see some of those result in dollars saved. 

To both the counties—because you have got to look at the system 

that your State has set up. If it is the county that is spending the 

money—because there are places that the county is actually spending funds. There are places where the State is actually spending 

funds. There are losses in money going to victims of crime, for example, by someone who is incarcerated to someone who is not. 

There are lots of things that you can do to calculate that, and 

it is nice to have the people who can do those kinds of calculations. 

The Council of State Governments has some wonderful people that 

can do some of those things. There are other great groups out 

there. The State of Washington has a great statistical group, their 

public policy statistical people, that have wonderful results for programs that are good information. So it is out there right now for 

the Washington State people. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, do you hear from your local sheriffs, who suggest that one of the ways you get people out of prisons is to have 

short-term jail stays so that the jailed population might actually go 

up a little bit while the State population goes down significantly—

an overall savings—but that you may end up with your sheriffs 

mad because you may have increased the jail population? 

Mr. MADDEN. We have those problems like we always have. You 

know, I will say, if the Federal Government says something to the 

States, they may save the Federal Government money and cost the 

States. There are things we do at the State that may cost the 

State; to save the State money, it will cost the locals. We have got 

to weigh that. 

Mr. SCOTT. Dr. La Vigne, have you dealt with that phenomenon? 

Ms. LA VIGNE. Not to date, but we have talked about it a lot. It 

is a big issue for the counties and for the States; and I really think 

Adam could speak to this quite well with some of the work they 

have been doing at Pew. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, if you have everybody around the table and 

there is going to be an overall cost savings and if someone else at 

the table will have a little budget increase, then the people around 

the table ought to be able to figure that out—where the table saves 

money, but you don’t punish one person over at one end of the 

table. 

Ms. LA VIGNE. Right. You are asking for a lot of coordination. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, that is kind of what you need to do. 

85

I mean you have got things like zero tolerance in a school system 

where you kick a kid out of school. You may have solved things in 

this little silo, but the Corrections Department is going to see the 

kid a little bit and overall it is just not an intelligent, smart-oncrime policy. So that is one of the reasons you need everybody 

around the table, looking at a policy, so you are doing something 

that makes sense. 

Mr. Gelb, did you want to comment? 

Mr. GELB. Sure. Two quick points. 

One, it is not necessarily clear that this is going to increase costs 

on local jails. It depends what current practice is. It is a similar 

program that ran in Georgia. Judge Alm, I think, can fill us in on 

some details of how this actually worked in Hawaii, but in Georgia, 

in some jurisdictions that tried a similar type of program, what 

they were doing is what Judge Alm described, which is waiting 

until violations accumulated and then setting somebody in prison 

until the next violation of probation hearing, which, on average 

was from about 28 days to up around 60 days. So they were burning up a lot of beds with violators as it was by just waiting and 

delaying and having that uncertainty and, certainly, a lack of 

swiftness. So, in moving to this other system, they reduced, you 

know, their bed use days at the jail level by about three-quarters 

by going to shorter sanctions and intermediate sanctions. 

The other thing I wanted to point out is that what you are hitting on is a really critical issue that highlights the Federal role 

here, which is the difference between the economic situation in 

2007, when Texas moved, and what we have today, right? In Texas, 

that line was going up. They had a proposal from the Texas Department of Corrections and the TDCJ to spend, I believe, something like $904 million, and so they were able to spend $240 million on something else. So they had a savings, or a cost aversion. 

Those are not the way those lines are going now—the budget lines 

anyway, right? People are cutting back. 

That is the point you were getting at, I think, with that jumpstart money. You know, you have got to wonder here. Everybody 

is saying, Well, this is a great win-win, and it can save all this 

money. Then why is anybody here before Congress saying that 

there is a Federal role and a need to contribute? 

And that is precisely on this point, which is that you do not have 

and States do not have the dollars right now to put a day reporting 

center into place, to put a reentry program up, to put a drug court 

or a HOPE program into place in order to start achieving those 

savings, because, as Judge Broderick said, you want a viable option 

here. You just don’t want to put somebody on probation with 100 

other people on the caseload if there is not going to be that swiftness and certainty and that accountability. So that is where I think 

the Federal comes in. 

Judge ALM. Chairman Scott, Dr. Hawken did look at that. The 

jail bed-days were neutral. They were a wash. Even though the 

guys from HOPE were getting sent every time, it is because the 

guys in the control group were getting their probation revoked 50 

percent more. They were sitting 10 weeks until the hearing, and 

the judge often put them back on probation for another 5 years, 

and would give them 6 months or a year in jail as a condition of 

86

probation. So the actual jail bed-days were neutral. The savings 

was all in prison, years in prison. And following up on Adam’s points with that, HOPE got $1.2 

million from our legislature in 2006, and we have been getting it 

every year since. I am just glad the idea came to me back then because if I went to them this year with it, we probably wouldn’t 

have gotten the money. They have approved it, so they have kept 

funding it. 

Mr. SCOTT. One of the ways you reduce the number of people in 

jail is by pretrial release. What are the public safety implications 

on pretrial release? 

Judge ALM. I am convinced we can do the same thing by putting 

these folks on a hotline, by watching them closely. We can do that 

on pretrial release. We have some guys who just can’t get out because they can’t make any sort of bail, and as long as they are not 

using drugs, for a lot of them, I think we can safely supervise them 

on pretrial release. We have been talking to our public safety people, and we are trying to get them started on that. Again, change 

is hard. 

Mr. SCOTT. One final question, Dr. La Vigne. 

Can you give us some order of magnitude about how much it 

costs to get this data? 

I know one thing that would be nice to have are the zip codes 

from which all the State prisoners come. Then you know where to 

put your more intensive programs. 

The data that you need to develop an intelligent plan, what kind 

of order of magnitude are we talking about? 

Ms. LA VIGNE. I don’t know if I can put a specific dollar amount 

to it, but suffice it to say it costs more than we ever thought it 

would. We selected our three counties because of the wealth of data 

that they had to work with, and yet we have continued to work 

with them to clean the data and organize it and analyze it in a way 

that can help them make sound data-driven decisions. 

States are in the same situation. Some States do keep good geographic data on zip codes and even on exact street addresses, but 

others do not, and you really can’t do this kind of justice reinvestment work if you are not working with empirical evidence to help 

guide decision-making. 

What we found, too, is that, with the economic situation in both 

States and counties, the research staff, if they did exist—and in 

some places, they don’t even have someone who is called a ‘‘researcher’’—has been shrinking. So, whereas we are coming in and 

trying to aid people and analyzing the data, our role is to help 

them have the tools to do it over time because, if we just swoop 

in and analyze things and leave, they are not going to have the 

ability to track the impact of their changes and to continually look 

and sustain their justice reinvestment efforts, and so we really 

need to support these States and these localities in giving them the 

staffing and resources to do this kind of work. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Judge Poe. 

Mr. POE. Just one comment about costs. 

In all of the research about savings and costs, when you have a 

probationer under this philosophy—he goes to jail for 2 or 3 days 

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*See page 2 of the prepared statement of the Honorable Jerry Madden printed on page 57 

of this hearing. 

and then may in a month go again for 2 or 3 days or whatever—

in theory, they should still be able to keep their jobs; they should 

still be able to make their restitution to the victim; they still 

should be able to pay their court costs and their fines, alimony or 

whatever else they are out to pay. You put them in prison, then 

all of that stops. 

Is there any data—a number—that I could understand about 

that factor of the costs? 

Ms. LA VIGNE. Well, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that 

it is more cost beneficial to keep people in the community versus 

to incarcerate them. Giving you a specific dollar figure, I can’t do. 

Mr. POE. Mr. Gelb, in all your stats there——

Mr. GELB. I have been looking for it. 

Jake, what page number are we on here? 

We have some figures in here. Goodness, I will find them very, 

very quickly. I think, from Colorado, about just the difference in 

what gets paid by probationers—let’s see. One second. All right, I 

am not coming up with it. 

Mr. POE. Can you furnish that to the Committee? 

Mr. GELB. Oh, we sure can. There was a report that was distributed, sorry I can’t put my hand on the page right now, but you are 

absolutely right. 

Representative Madden, I am not sure if you are familiar with 

the Texas numbers that the Texas Public Policy Foundation just 

put out, but we can give you some Texas numbers as well.* 

You are right. If you put somebody in prison, the victim restitution stops. The child support payments stop. The other stuff stops. 

You know, a lot of folks are going to think that this population is 

not able to pay supervision fees or to pay these other fines and 

fees, but they are tremendous. They are tremendous. 

Thanks, Richard. 

So, just looking here at the numbers from Colorado: 

Additionally, offenders ineligible for probation but diverted from 

prison to residential community corrections beds paid $11.75 million toward their own housing, meals and treatment, nearly 

$900,000 in child support, over $1.2 million in State taxes, and 

over $3 million in Federal taxes in fiscal year 2007. 

Mr. POE. Can you furnish that to me in writing or to the Chairman? I can’t remember those numbers. 

That is all I have, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

I would like to thank our witnesses for their testimony today. 

Members may have additional written questions, which we will 

forward to you and ask you to answer as promptly as possible so 

that the answers can be made part of the record. The hearing 

record will remain open for 1 week for the submission of additional 

materials. 

I would ask unanimous consent to enter into the record articles 

describing the initiatives in North Carolina—the justice reinvestVerDate 0ct 09 2002 18:42 Nov 04, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00095 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CRIME\051110\56393.000 HJUD1 PsN: 56393

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ment in North Carolina where they are reducing spending on corrections and reinvesting and strategies to increase public safety. 

Also, the Governor of Virginia today issued Executive Order 11—

a very aggressive second chance operation to reduce the number of 

people coming back. That Executive order and statement from the 

Governor’s office will be made part of the record. 

Without objection. 

[The information referred to follows:]


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Mr. SCOTT. Is there anything further to come before the Committee? 

Without objection, the Subcommittee stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:40 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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