How is the economy affecting the department of corrections?
John: The Economy is affecting everyone. The University of Michigan just released a statistic of a 15.3% prediction of unemployment for Michigan. When we have declining revenues that means we cant fund governmental operations, this isn’t new to us, we’ve been finding ways to save in our budget since 01, but when we have situations like an economic crisis and there are revenue declines we haven’t seen in over 50 years, we as an agency have to find a way to handle this. One way we do this now is through the prisoner reentry program. Many of our policies have bi-partisan support, meaning we can reduce facilities. We can close facilities because of smaller prison populations. If this process wasn’t enacted in 2004 the population would still be just as high, in fact we would have had to expand the budget to accommodate the growing population. We have to be safety conscience and balance the cost factors. Tough budgets affect us just as they do any other department. We will see more correctio
