Kearns Republican Rep. Eric Hutchings and Layton Republican Sen. Stuart Adams offered a bill to the state legislature Wednesday that would reform Utah’s prison sentencing. The proposal is based on advice given by the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. Under the bill, low-level offenders would be diverted from prison to alternative, community-based rehabilitation options.
The reforms claim to avert up to 97 percent of Utah’s expected prison population growth over 20 years. Anna Brower, Public Policy Advocate with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, said that the proposals would go a long way to ensure that non-violent offenders are given appropriate sentences.
“The main goals of this reform are to make sure that we’re not putting so many nonviolent, low-level offenders in prison when they could be better served in the community and then it’s also trying to insure that sentence length isn’t excessive beyond the needs of punishment and rehabilitation,” she said.
According to Brower, the cost of sending a non-violent offender to prison is roughly twice the cost of community-based solutions. She said that prison for these offenders delays opportunities to turn their lives around.
“Not only is it costing more money to put them in prison but they’re not able to have a job, be functioning in the community, be taking care of their family, be putting their life back together that may be destroyed from their substance abuse problems, that sort of thing,” she said.
Last year, the CCJJ reported that increased length of stay for non-violent offenders was one of the leading causes in Utah’s growing prisoner numbers.
