Internet Article Review

BUDGETING ISSUES IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS

One of the reasons why jails still exist despite overcrowding is the budget allotted for the criminal justice administration . But the sudden rise in the number of prisoners posed a problem when it comes to budgeting

The article on policies and procedures of correctional facilities operated by the Multnomah County clearly shows that it has been experiencing financial shortage due to faulty budgeting . The article shows that it is very expensive to accommodate a prisoner , which costs 157 /day in Multnomah County . This is expensive compared

to the rate of jail systems in other counties . This was attributed to the labor contracts which resulted to raised labor costs , extraordinarily high medical costs which led to high cost of the overall system in jail ineffective jail staffing pattern , abuse of sick leave , overtime and compensatory time and increase in the Sheriff 's budget . Aside from all of these , the Multnomah County has a very expensive juvenile detention facility . It costs 401 /day to accommodate a juvenile

The article further shows that the Sheriff 's Office has practiced budgeting techniques which hid the management practices of the organization . This resulted to difficulty of finding out the different organization functions . Even the district attorney 's office has to seek the help of a financial analyst to make sense of the financial outline of the jail system

What the county requires is a program called priority-based budgeting Each department of the jail system must present program offers for the county commissioners to fund . However , some of these program offers are rejected . The Sheriff 's office has a that the county commission has approved

The priority-based budgeting was applied so that the commissioners can make an informed decision from an accurate financial picture of the different programs . This enabled the commissioners to be knowledgeable in whether funding or rejecting a particular program

The article concluded that the outside help of a financial consultant was necessary to analyze the Sheriff 's costs and budgets . It was noted that it is a natural and understandable inclination of a government agency ' to do the budgeting practices discussed in the article . The DA 's office thought that similar practices have been done by other government agencies in the county

It was suggested that the commission should collaborate more with the Sheriff . The county commissioners should understand the operations that they fund so that the problems might not occur again

The workgroup of the jail systems should focus on the Sheriff 's cost reporting and budgeting practices so that they can partake in any decisions to make . The commission should also found a work group that will inspect the jails and report frequently to the commissioners . This work group must consist of representatives from the law enforcement agencies in the county , the County Chair , the County Commissioner , the United States Attorney , the administrator for the federal facility at Sheridan , representatives from the business community , a representative from the medical community , the Department of Corrections...