It's clear that finding ways to trim the state budget substantially is trickier than Republicans and business-backed think tanks would have people think. Scaling back state spending to the levels these groups advocate would mean drastic cuts to the state's already under-funded education, health care, and social services programs. But that's not to say that every agency in Illinois works as efficiently as it could.

As we've written before, one sector that could stand to be trimmed up is the state's corrections department, which cost Illinois taxpayers $1.36 billion dollars in the fiscal year 2008 (PDF), or 6.1 percent of the state’s General Revenue Fund. A new report from Northwestern Law Professor Malcolm Young provides a solid gameplan for implementing humane -- and economically responsible -- reforms.

According to Young, former head of the John Howard Society, Illinois lawmakers looking to curb wasteful spending have a choice: On the one hand, we can follow the path of California, well-known for its highly punitive sentencing laws and powerful corrections lobby.  On the other, we can look to New York, which has avoided high mandatory sentences and invested heavily in alternatives to incarceration.

The sensible direction should be clear. While violent crime and property-related crime rates fell by 46 and 38 percent respectively in California between 1995 and 2007, the state increased its prison population by a staggering 31 percent. The cost of maintaining the system is now overwhelming the state, which is facing its own budget disaster. New York, on the other hand, decreased its prison population by 9 percent. And its violent crime rate and property-related crime rates fell even further than California's (51 percent and 47 percent, respectively). 

Young writes that the reason for the discrepancy is simple: the majority of politicians in New York were not "driven into a frenzy to ratchet up punishments for almost any crime that hit the newspapers." The same can't be said for Illinois. Here, the state's corrections system is dominated by individuals convicted of simple drug possession and former inmates who violate technicalities in their parole. By and large, these are not dangerous, hardened criminals. As a result, Illinois witnessed similar crime rate drops to California in the last 12 years (44 percent in violent crime and 30 percent in property-related crime) but a 20 percent growth in the incarceration rate.

Considering that the state pays an average annual fee of $24,831 to care for each inmate, that's not a sustainable trend. "We need laws that recognize that many low-level drug offenders don’t have to be incarcerated," writes Young, "as well as greatly expanded opportunities for drug-treatment services and rehabilitation."

The study provides 24 recommendations aimed at enabling the state to greatly expand upon effective crime- and cost-reduction strategies. These include prerequisites for success (assigning an official at the local and state level whose mission is to reduce incarceration), actions at the county level (implement goal-focused, pre-trial services in bond-setting court), and at the state level (reduce penalties in low level drug cases, expand community-based programs for adults and juveniles). Similar changes, if enacted in the preceeding decades, would have saved the state crucial revenue; as the Sun-Times editorial page pointed out earlier this month, had the General Assembly considered lowering the threshold for a Class 1 felony for the manufacture or delivery of cocaine to a single gram in 1987, the state's prison budget would not have grown at such a rate (four times as fast as the education budget).

A version of this report was already submitted to the Taxpayer Action Board, who moments ago announced the release of their cost-saving analysis (we'll have more on that later). Gov. Quinn and lawmakers should make sure to focus on this advice.

Image courtesy of The Chicago Reporter (PDF).