Arizona
JRI Year: 2008
2008
Background
In 2007, Arizona’s prison population was projected to increase 50 percent within 10 years, twice the projected growth rate of the resident population. Probation revocations, which were often a result of drug and alcohol use, represented a third of prison admissions, costing the state an estimated $100 million annually.1 Moreover, geographic analyses revealed that a handful of neighborhoods accounted for the majority of criminal activity and costs to the criminal justice system. From 2006 to 2008, the CSG Justice Center worked with Arizona state leaders to develop data-driven policy options designed to address these issues.
Policies
Signed into law in 2008, the Safe Communities Act established performance-incentive funding for county-run probation departments to reduce crime and violations rather than revoke people on probation to state custody. It also developed an earned-time policy to incentivize success on probation and focus supervision on people who are at a high risk of reoffending.2
Outcomes
After the state’s JRI effort, Arizona saw the number of people revoked to prison for probation violations fall by 28 percent between 2008 and 2011, saving the state $36 million that would have been necessary to house the additional people. However, due to budget pressures, the state legislature did not follow through on providing the performance-based reinvestment funding to county probation departments as required and ultimately repealed the law requiring the state to do so.3
For more information, see Justice Reinvestment in Arizona.
JRI-Driven Policies and Practices
- Establish/expand earned discharge (probation/parole)
Other JRI-Funded Projects
In Arizona, the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission, in partnership with the CSG Justice Center, will fund a 2021 legislative mandate to identify reportable data housed at agencies and make it sharable as part of the Justice Counts initiative.
1 The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2023, Justice Reinvestment in Arizona, New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, retrieved May 16, 2023 from https://csgjusticecenter.org/projects/justice-reinvestment/past-states/arizona/.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.