South Carolina

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South Carolina Sentencing Reform
Commission Projecting the Impact of Our
Proposed Reforms
John Speir, Ph.D. Applied Research Services,
Inc. June 27, 2009
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Defining a Projected Impact
Designed not to predict what will happen but
rather explore what would happen if assumptions
unfold in different ways... Donella Meadows
Thinking in Systems A Primer, 2008
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Why Forecast the Future? How Do We Know our
Reforms will Work?

• Conduct legislative policy impact analyses
• Assess the impact of resources on efficiency and
  operations

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Projections

• Assess financial impact of agency, court,
  legislative decisions

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Simulation

• Answer what if questions
• Can test every aspect of a proposed change
• Can explore new policies or operating procedures
  without the expense disruption of experimenting
  on the real system

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Simulation

• Reduces the emotion associated with hard
  decisions
• What is the probability associated with possible
  consequences? (also called a risk profile)
• With uncertainty, policy-makers will invariably
  get different results with forecast

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What is Micro-Simulation?

• Actual offender records are read into the model
  Past Admissions Active Inmates
• Inmate records are re-built based on policy
  scenario
• Create a new sentence or LOS outcome for any
  policy group of interest

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Flow of Offenders Through the Model
Past Inmate Admissions 2008-09
What Do We Know?
Uncertainty??

• Mandatory minimums
• 2. Inmates who have already been released
• Past institutional behavior and projected release
  date
• Past Board Decisions
• Past Institutional Conduct
• Historical Sentencing time-served

• Future Admissions
• Future Parole Board decisions
• Future Institutional conduct among active
• Inmates with extended prison terms
• Product failure (returns to prison)

• Demographics
• Prior History
• Current Offense
• Sentence Length
• Geography
• Parole Data
• Admission Type
• Etc.

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Known Outcomes Residual Uncertainty
85 - No Parole Mandatory Minimums Already
Released Inmates Historical max out LOS
for Short-term inmates
Simulated Estimates Needed
Future conduct for long stay inmates Board
Decisions Change in Admissions New Admits Or
Revocations
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How Do You Project Future Admissions?
History SCDC Inmate Admits 2005 13,234 2006
13,397 2007 13,906 2008 13,950
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Future admissions are still a major uncertainty
But We look for collateral data and
methods/tools to help project the future (status
quo)
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What about proposals without any historical
data?

• Pennsylvania High Speed chase law was split into
  two groups.
• High Speed chase
• High speed chase under the influence or involves
  an out-of-state pursuit

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Review CCH or Sentencing Report

• What percent () were charged/convicted of a DUI
• What percent () occurred in out an out-of-state
  jurisdiction
• We set up a range (35 to 45) and ran the model
  hundreds of times to identify the most likely
  impact

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Think in Terms of What-if Policy Scenarios
Policy Groups
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Policy Scenarios Policy Groups

• What would happen if we could divert just 15 of
  the inmates with a specific offense and profile?
• What would happen if we used the prison term
  instead of the total sentence to set the parole
  eligibility date?

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Think in Terms of What-if Policy Scenarios
Policy Groups

• Judges used a bench book summarizing state
  sentencing practices and judges sentenced just
  30 of the sentences in the middle sentencing
  range?
• What if we could divert simple drug users
  from prison?

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Strategy

• Create a status quo projection that take into
  account anticipated changes in prison admissions
• Status quo projection serves as the baseline for
  all proposed reforms
• (individually and collectively)

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Strategy

• Define the proposals and policy groups
  sufficiently to assign a cost estimate
• Example Driving under suspension would be a
  minimum security bed
• Each proposal is evaluated using conservative
  estimates and is simulated hundreds of times
  using different error rates

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