State lawmakers can claim to be acting conservatively, Cochran said, but they’re not responsible for the consequences of their decisions. “The state’s dumping responsibility on local government,” he said.
Fisher said in February the state Corrections Department would begin repossessing prisoners from local institutions in order to “reduce spending by $5 million to comply with Gov. Phil Bryant’s recent order.”
In a statement at the time, Fisher said that he was re-evaluating the agency’s spending, given “low pay, high turnover, critical staff shortages, and aging facilities.”
The state was paying prison guards so little that it couldn’t even find staff for its community work centers, which run the convict labor program, Fisher said. Mississippi, in other words, couldn’t even afford free labor. “I don’t like having to close community work centers, but we simply don’t have the staff to keep some of them operating. Until we improve the pay of corrections officers, staffing will continue to be a critical issue,” Fisher said.
Like Mississippi, neighboring Louisiana, as well as Kansas, have recently become laboratories for conservative policy, with hard-line Republicans slashing taxes and dramatically cutting spending. The argument was that the tax cuts would fuel growth. Instead, the states have become economic basket-cases — Kansas actually performed worse economically than its neighbors. Deficits in Kansas and Louisiana both soared and basic services have been cut beyond the bone.
The next to fall in Mississippi will be workers at regional jails that have lost 20 percent of their inmates. Officials in Stone County and George County said that around 40 employees in each would be laid off if the jails were forced to close, a necessity if the inmate population or the state reimbursement doesn’t increase. The counties are losing $72,000 per month each, officials said. Both counties still owe significant sums on bonds that financed the jails, so even if they shut them down to stop the bleeding, taxpayers will still be on the hook.
“It’s a game,” said Scott Strickland. “The commissioner of corrections wants raises for all his state employees, so he’s trying to cry wolf.”