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Home > Blog > All > Inimai M. Chettiar

Inimai M. Chettiar

  • June 13, 2012

    Why Are We Spending So Much To Lock Up Elderly Prisoners Who Pose Little Threat?

    Guest Post

    By Inimai M. Chettiar, Policy Counsel, and Vanita Gupta, Deputy Legal Director, at the American Civil Liberties Union. Ms. Gupta directs the ACLU’s Center for Justice and its Safe and Fair Initiative to End Overincarceration. Ms. Chettiar serves as national legislative counsel coordinating the Initiative, and is incoming Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

    Elderly prisoners are the least dangerous group of people behind bars but the most expensive to incarcerate. Yet despite this truth, the number of elderly prisoners is skyrocketing. Harsher sentencesfor less serious crimes – one defining characteristic of our failed “tough on crime” and “war on drugs” policies – are responsible for this staggering increase in the number of older prisoners, and taxpayers are taking the hit.

    You may be shocked to learn how much money states are dumping into housing aging prisoners who pose little safety risk. Today the American Civil Liberties Union released a report, “At America’s Expense: The Mass Incarceration of the Elderly,” which details the growth of our aging prisoner population, the low public safety threat elderly prisoners pose and the fiscal impact of incarcerating them. Strikingly, the report estimates that the average aging prisoner costs taxpayers about twice as much as the average prisoner.

    The report is co-authored by the ACLU’s fiscal policy analyst and in-house economist, Will Bunting. He conducted a fiscal impact analysis, weighing the cost of incarcerating the average aging prisoner against the burden releasing that same prisoner would impose on public benefit programs. Even taking into consideration the cost of state payments for Medicaid, supplemental security food stamps, energy assistance, and other public assistance benefits, the report estimates that states could save $66,000 per year for each aging person released from prison. To put this number in context, the average American household makes $40,000. The money thus saved could be redistributed to more worthwhile and cost-effective state goals like education and infrastructure.

    A look at the grander scheme of things is even more startling: in 1988, the United States spent about $11 billion on the entire corrections system. Today, we spend about $16 billion annually on the aging prisoner population alone.

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    Tags:
    Prison policy/incarceration, Criminal Justice, ACLU, At America's Expense, elderly prisoners, Guest Post, Inimai M. Chettiar, Leandro Andrade, Mass Incarceration, prison costs, Prison reform, Scott sisters
  • September 27, 2011

    It’s Not Just Prosecutorial Leverage That’s Eroding our Justice System

    Guest Post

    By Inimai M. Chettiar, Policy Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. Ms. Chettiar serves as national legislative counsel to achieve smart criminal justice reform in states across the country. She has published scholarship on the use of economic analysis to promote laws advancing social welfare.

    Yesterday’s New York Times article highlighting the coercive practice of plea bargaining is not news to advocates of criminal justice reform. Over the last three decades, this country’s excessively long sentencing schemes, inflexible mandatory minimum laws, and arbitrary three-strikes-you’re-out legislation have created a “justice” system in which prosecutors wield ridiculous amounts of leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants. NYU’s Rachel Barkow sums it up best: “When you have that attitude you penalize people who have the nerve to go to trial.” Almost 100 percent of federal defendants plead guilty.

    Our criminal justice system has made a farce of our constitutional rights to a fair trial before our peers, to effective representation by legal counsel, and to equal protection under the law. In a misguided attempt to be "tough on crime," the United States has chosen the irrational tactic of pouring billions of dollars into building more prisons and jails (and arresting and prosecuting more low-level and nonviolent offenses) while cutting back services to help people stay out of them. We increasingly throw people into the system for absurdly petty crimes, incarcerate people presumed innocent even before they have their day in court (often for months or years before trial), provide them with subpar defense resources, ensure that they remain imprisoned in humiliating and inhumane conditions for excessively long periods of time, and then release them with nothing more than the shirts on their backs and criminal records.

    All these practices, among others, have led us to become the largest incarcerator in the world.

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    Tags:
    Legal services, Prison policy/incarceration, Criminal Justice, Guest Post, guilty pleas, incarceration, Inimai M. Chettiar, Mass Incarceration, plea bargaining
  • August 9, 2011

    A Way Toward Balancing Government Budgets While Promoting Justice: Break Our Addiction to Incarceration

    Guest Post

    By Inimai M. Chettiar, Policy Counsel, and Vanita Gupta, Deputy Legal Director, at the American Civil Liberties Union. Ms. Gupta directs the ACLU’s Center for Justice and its Safe and Fair Initiative to End Overincarceration. Ms. Chettiar serves as national legislative counsel for the initiative and has published scholarshipon using economic analysis to promote social justice. They are primary authors of the ACLU’s new report, “Smart Reform is Possible: States Reducing Incarceration Rates and Costs While Protecting Communities.”

    There isn’t an American who hasn’t felt the devastating effects of the Great Recession. And just when most of us thought it couldn’t get any worse, the S&P downgrade of the federal government’s Treasury debt last Friday sent shocks through the country and the world, increasing talk about a double-dip recession and creating sharp declines on Wall Street yesterday reminiscent of the 2008 market crash. A downgrade of state and municipality debts could also follow.

    The scarcity of funds in American households and the resulting decline in government revenues have forced lawmakers to think twice before spending precious taxpayer dollars. Some states have enacted laws in the name of saving money that have been incredibly short sighted – like cutting funding for public and higher education or increasing financial burdens on the poor. These types of policies may save small amounts of money in the short run, but will have devastating effects on our children’s futures and prevent individuals on the margins from contributing to society.

    Among all this economic tragedy, however, there is a silver lining. As detailed by a new ACLU report released today, several states have enacted cost-effective laws cutting their unnecessary overreliance and massive spending on prisons while continuing to protect the safety of our communities. This is especially good news considering that state and federal governments spend about $70 billion annually on prisons and corrections. Over the last 25 years, state corrections spending grew by 674 percent, outpacing the growth of other government expenditures.

    Our report, entitled Smart Reform is Possible: States Reducing Incarceration Rates and Costs While Protecting Public Safety, highlights six states - Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio - that recently passed significant bipartisan reforms to reduce their prison populations and budgets. These states also experienced declines in their crime rates while these new policies were in place. If states that are as “tough on crime” as Texas, Mississippi, and South Carolina can engage in more rational criminal justice policymaking and recognize that mass incarceration is not necessary to protect public safety, there is no reason for other states not to follow suit.

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    Tags:
    Prison policy/incarceration, Criminal Justice, ACLU, ACLU's Center for Justice, Guest Post, incarceration reform, Inimai M. Chettiar, Prison reform, Safe and Fair Initiative to End Overincarceration, Smart Reform is Possible: States Reducing Incarceration Rates and Costs While Protecting Communities, Vanita Gupta
  • May 24, 2011

    Plata is a Net Benefit to Public Safety and Our Constitutional Rights

    Guest Post

    By Inimai M. Chettiar, Policy Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. Ms. Chettiar serves as national legislative counsel to achieve smart criminal justice reform in states across the country. She has published scholarship on the use of economic analysis to promote laws advancing social welfare.

    Yesterday’s Supreme Court opinion in Brown v. Plata is controversial only to those who do not understand the magnitude of the overincarceration epidemic in this country. The high court upheld an order mandating California to reduce prison overcrowding to remedy systemic constitutional violations. The opinion in no way mandates the blanket “early release” of prisoners; instead, it encourages the state to use prisons only when doing so would be cost-effective and increase public safety. It finds that California's prisons are so overcrowded that they violate the standard of decency required by the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Unfortunately, the Plata dissenters use alarmist language that would make readers believe Harold Camping predicted the Rapture a little too early. According to the dissenters, “three army divisions” of bloodthirsty “convicted felons” - “who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym" - will soon descend upon California’s neighborhoods, leaving behind “a grim roster of victims” with “terrible things sure to happen” to us all.  

    But in their over 30 pages of opinion, the dissenters neglect to mention several key facts.  Foremost, reducing prison overcrowding will actually lead to less crime and safer neighborhoods. Our extremist sentencing policies have bloated our prisons so severely that not only are they unsafe, unhygienic, and unconstitutional, but also excessively costly and actually a detriment to public safety. The majority notes (quoting former California Governor Schwarzenegger) that “’overcrowding causes harm to people and property, leads to inmate unrest and misconduct . . . and increases recidivism as shown within this state and in others.’” California’s communities must then absorb individuals returning from prison who are often more dangerous than when they left. Improving prison conditions makes us all safer.