By Oliver Hinds and Jack Norton
Jail Expansion as Prison Reform in Indiana
During the 2016 presidential race, Governor Mike Pence said: “We need to adopt criminal justice reform nationally. I signed criminal justice reform in the state of Indiana, and we are very proud of it.” He was referring to House Bill 1006, which he signed on May 5, 2015 after it passed the state House and Senate without a single opposing vote. The bill was, among other things, designed to reduce the number of people in prison by housing people convicted of low-level felonies in county jails. It was lauded by many as part of a trend towards bipartisan prison reform. Any positive effect, however, was short-lived. Indiana’s prison population decreased and then quickly rebounded to pre-reform levels. Now, the total number of people behind bars in Indiana is exploding as more and more are sent to jail, and as people in prison serve longer sentences. To ease the jail overcrowding precipitated by the bill, many counties are expanding their jails or constructing new ones, the costs of which are borne by taxpayers in Indiana. At the same time, the most vulnerable residents languish in county jails, sometimes far from home, and face a landscape marked by poverty and high overdose rates upon release.
Much of HB1006 was catalyzed by a justice reform effort initiated in 2010, under then-Governor Mitch Daniels, to address rising prison incarceration and increased corrections spending in the state.* Once implemented, however, the bill worked to drastically increase incarceration in Indiana; in the two years following reform, the county jail population rose 32 percent from 16,100 to 21,300.
The recent jail growth in Indiana is reminiscent of the decades when mass incarceration was being built up across the country. In many states, from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, a 32 percent increase in jail population over two years was not uncommon. But around the mid-2000s, growth in the U.S. incarceration rate began to slow. Declines, rather than rapid growth, became the norm. As more and more people understand the link between rising inequality and imprisonment, between racism and incarceration, there has been growing momentum to undo the build-up of jails and prisons of the last forty years.