Budget Cuts Slash Alternative Incarceration Program

HARTFORD (AP) — About 650 people will be kept out of alternative incarceration programs this fiscal year because of a $2.3 million budget cut agreed to by Gov John G. Rowland’s administration and state Judicial Branch officials.

The spending decrease comes as many groups are touting more drug treatment and counseling – which are the cornerstones of alternative incarceration – as keys to easing Connecticut’s crowded prison population.

State officials say the cost reductions are part of a series of cuts in state government needed to keep spending under the statutory cap.

Decreases in spending for alternative incarceration programs will force about 30 layoffs among private treatment providers under contract with the Correction Department and the Judicial Branch.

“We’re undermining our own policies,” said Ron Cretaro, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Nonprofits. “This means fewer people will get the kind of supervision and support they need, and this is a public safety problem.”

The association represents close to 540 nonprofit agencies, including about 40 that contract with the state to provide counseling and treatment to adults in the Alternative Incarceration Program. About $30 million in state funds is paid out to these agencies each year.

This fall, the AIP funding was reduced in several key areas by $2.3 million. That was part of a multiple-step initiative ordered by Gov Rowland to help keep this year’s $12.31 billion state budget under the statutory spending cap.

This year’s total budget, as originally enacted, fell $49.4 million under the cap. Just three months into the 2000-01 fiscal year, the administration announced that key accounts in five departments were on pace to overspend by $168.4 million.

In response, Gov Rowland ordered across-the-board reductions in most departmental budgets, saving another $48.5 million.

The Legislature’s Program Review and Investigations Committee adopted a report this month calling for a “community-based rehabilitation” network, emphasizing expanded mental health and drug-treatment services to ease prison crowding.

Between January 1997 and January 2000 alone, the inmate population grew by 15 percent, and now exceeds 17,500.

Marc Ryan, secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, acknowledged the budget cuts may send “some mixed messages.”

“But the bottom line is, we’ve got to balance the short-term need of staying under the spending cap with the long-term need” of maintaining treatment services, he added. “We have to make those decisions all the time.”