Partnership for Safety and Justice (Portland OR)

It's Good News, But...

Today’s revenue forecast will be the last forecast to influence Oregon’s legislative budget decisions before the close of the session.

All in all, the news was good. The state is looking at roughly $115 million more in tax revenue for the 2013-15 biennium. But Oregon can’t celebrate too quickly. The additional revenue is not enough to prevent serious cuts to a wide range of critical services in Oregon. Without further effort by the legislature, the human services budget, for example, could still experience $120 to $130 million of devastating cuts.

And what does this mean for public safety reform efforts?Much of the conversation about needed corrections reform has focused on getting money to our crumbling local public safety infrastructure. Victim services, community corrections, addiction treatment, and re-entry programs are severely under-funded. Maybe the increased revenue can help change that dynamic.

But Oregonians shouldn’t forget that the need to pass HB 3194, a comprehensive package of corrections reforms, isn’t about saving money (and it never was). HB 3194 is about public safety -- making communities safe by making it less likely people will re-offend and by focusing on front-end crime prevention. This reform effort is about passing policies that make Oregon’s approach to crime reduction smarter and more effective.

Temporary investments made possible with a little more revenue won’t address Oregon’s larger public safety problems. Our system is currently out of balance.
A short-term revenue fix doesn’t stop ballooning prison growth. The state’s prison population is projected to grow by 2,000 inmates in the next 10 years. Unless reforms are passed to stem this growth, prison spending will squeeze out more and more critical crime-fighting resources that keep communities safe.

Legislators need to modify Oregon’s sentencing laws to avert prison expansion and avoid a system increasingly focused on the wrong side of the crime equation. We can’t continue to spend the majority of our public safety resources on prisons and responses that happen after people have been harmed by crime.

We need to keep our eyes on the prize. Oregonians are ready to shift toward strategies that maintain accountability, modify sentencing to allow for greater investments in crime prevention, and restore balance to our justice system. 

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