FISCAL NOTE

Date Requested: January 12, 2022
Time Requested: 02:35 PM
Agency: Corrections & Rehabilitation, Division of
CBD Number: Version: Bill Number: Resolution Number:
1691 Introduced HB4006
CBD Subject: Crime


FUND(S):

General Revenue

Sources of Revenue:

General Fund

Legislation creates:

Creates New Revenue, Increases Existing Expenses



Fiscal Note Summary


Effect this measure will have on costs and revenues of state government.


Caveats & Assumptions 1. Commitments to prison in CY19 were used for this analysis. CY20 and CY21 numbers were impacted significantly by the pandemic and would not be representative of an average year. 2. Analysis was not conducted on impacts from criminal code changes where the DCR received no commitments for that charge in CY19. 3. Drug offenses, DUI-related offenses, and revocations from sex offender supervision account for a large proportion of annual commitments to prison. Those criminal codes lie outside of chapter 61 and are not part of the proposed legislation. 4. The proposed legislation contains several changes making direct comparisons difficult. The analysis focused on those criminal charges that were most common and clear comparisons could be made. 5. The proposed legislation added enhanced criminal charges for several crimes where the financial impact was above $25,000 (grand larceny, forgery, embezzlement, etc), current code provides a felony penalty for those crimes where the cost impact was $2,500 or above. The DCR does not know how many of the commits in CY19 for these crimes were for a crime where more than $25,000 was involved, therefore it was assumed for the purposes of the analysis that all of those commits were for crimes that were between $2,500 and $25,000. 6. The proposed code changes many indeterminate sentences to determinate sentences. There is no way for the DCR to predict what sentence within these ranges may be chosen by a judge. Therefore, the analysis compares the potential minimum prison sentences and the potential maximum prison sentences between current code and the proposed structure. 7. A cost of $54.13 per day per offender was used for this analysis. This is equal to the cost calculated by the State Budget Office to house an offender in the regional jails. Although incarceration in a prison is more costly, increases and decreases in the population are typically felt in the backlog of state prisoners in regional jails. Findings The DCR analyzed the expected fiscal burden of the proposed minimum and maximum sentences compared to the fiscal burden under current code using the caveats and assumptions explained above. The results show that the minimum sentences proposed (minimum time to parole eligibility) are in many cases significantly shorter than minimum sentences under current law. However, the opposite is also true, the maximum sentences are significantly longer than many of the maximums under current law. If this structure were applied to CY19 commitments and the financial burden for the minimum sentence was calculated using a cost of $54.13 per offender per day, the results show that the State of West Virginia could save up to $36 million dollars per year. However, the same calculation applied to the maximum sentences allowed showed that it could cost the State of West Virginia up to $22 million dollars per year. These savings/costs would compound, for example, this analysis just looks at one year of commitments, the full impact would be each year’s commitments “stacking” on each other.



Fiscal Note Detail


Effect of Proposal Fiscal Year
2022
Increase/Decrease
(use"-")
2023
Increase/Decrease
(use"-")
Fiscal Year
(Upon Full
Implementation)
1. Estmated Total Cost 0 0 0
Personal Services 0 0 0
Current Expenses 0 0 0
Repairs and Alterations 0 0 0
Assets 0 0 0
Other 0 0 0
2. Estimated Total Revenues 0 0 0


Explanation of above estimates (including long-range effect):


Please explain increases and decreases in personal services, current expenses, repairs and alterations, assets, other costs and revenues, including assumptions and data sources and delineation between start-up and ongoing costs. Please also include a long-range schedule of costs and revenues if fiscal impact is expected to vary in future years.



Memorandum


Please identify any areas of vagueness, technical defects, reasons a bill would not have a fiscal impact, and/or any special issues not captured elsewhere on this form.



    Person submitting Fiscal Note: Rebecca Hildebrand
    Email Address: Rebecca.L.Hildebrand@wv.gov