Reclaiming Lost Opportunity for Real Cost-Cutting
Posted January 9, 2009

If you’ve ever visited the official website of the State of New Jersey, you probably know it to be a maze of pages with layers of links expounding upon seemingly any and every topic or program having to do with state government. But among the overabundance of information, one section appears strikingly sparse: the New Jersey Office of Faith Based Initiatives (OFBI).

Part of the New Jersey Department of State, OFBI presents its mission and vision as follows:

Mission
[T]o develop relationships and strengthen partnerships with federal and state agencies, corporations, foundations, institutions of higher learning, and capacity building training organizations in an effort to create greater access to funding and other resource opportunities for Faith Based and Community Based Organizations.

Vision
To eliminate all barriers to funding and other resource opportunities, create greater access for partnership and enhance the capacity of faith and community based organizations to effectively design [and] implement successful programming and efficiently manage the day to day operations of their organizations.

Yet, from the website, it’s difficult to see how OFBI is accomplishing these goals today. For example, the site itself is glaringly outdated. The few links populating OFBI’s pages include a Schedule of Events link which invites viewers to a symposium that was held June 13, 2008; a Regional Faith Based Training Sessions link (under Accomplishments), which boasts of events held in 2003 and 2004 and looks ahead to OFBI’s second annual Faith Based Resource Exposition – in 2004, and a State and Federal Funding Opportunity link (also under Accomplishments), which notes OFBI “will again administer” a certain program in FY’04.

Granted, there is an active link entitled FY'09 Funding Opportunity, but aside from this, most date references are to 2003 or 2004.

In 2004, the same year in which OFBI’s website appears stuck, the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy released a report entitled New Jersey's Quiet Faith-Based Initiative: A Case Study, which notes that six years after its 1998 launch, New Jersey’s faith-based initiative “remains a relatively obscure state operation.” The report says this obscurity is in part because “there is little about this initiative that differs from what the state had long been doing in delivering social services to its residents.”

Well, if “obscurity” was the word five years ago, “invisibility” is probably more appropriate today.

This begs the question: Is the New Jersey OFBI actually fulfilling its potential or is it missing out on critical opportunities that could not only improve the lives of New Jersey residents but actually help address the fiscal crisis our state faces.

For example, consider for a moment the money New Jersey spends to house non-violent criminals – specifically, non-violent drug offenders. According to "Wasting Money, Wasting Lives: Calculating the Hidden Costs of Incarceration in New Jersey," a 2008 report issued by the Drug Policy Alliance,

New Jersey leads the nation in the proportion of its prisoners sentenced for nonviolent drug law violations. In 2003, nearly half of all prisoners entering the system had been convicted for drug law violations – well above the national average of 31 percent. The financial costs of keeping so many nonviolent criminals locked up are staggering: for the roughly 7,000 individuals entering the system in 2003 for a drug conviction, the state stands to lose nearly a half a billion dollars in direct incarceration costs. But the total price tag for New Jersey’s overuse of incarceration includes not just these direct costs. The comprehensive cost of the penal system includes additional hidden economic costs such as lost wages due to incarceration, reduced lifetime wages, lost taxable income and lost child support

The report notes it costs the state of New Jersey $46, 880 to incarcerate one prisoner for one year. In 2003, 14,727 prisoners entered the state’s system, racking up a whopping cost of $690 million – or more than two-thirds of a billion – per year. Furthermore, the average prisoner spends approximately two years behind bars, costing the state over $90,000 per inmate. 

In a March 20, 2008 testimony, given by Joseph Greer, Campaign Director for New Jersey Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), Greer noted:

A number of studies reveal that drug treatment can be far more cost effective than incarceration…. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, every dollar spent on effective treatment yields a $4 to $7 return in reduced drug related crime, theft and criminal justice costs…. In addition to cost savings, drug courts [which provide treatment as part of an alternative to imprisonment] reduce the rate of recidivism. In 2005, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that recidivism rates for offenders who attend drug courts are lower than those for addicted criminals who went to prison or were placed on regular probation.

While yearly incarceration costs can top $40K, the annual cost of a drug rehabilitation program is approximately half of that. And when it comes to the effectiveness of drug rehabilitation programs, studies show that faith-based programs have a record for low recidivism, and organizations like Teen Challenge and Prison Fellowship have demonstrated histories of notable rehabilitation success to prove it.

Given this fact – and with the state continuing to face astronomical budgetary shortfalls – exploring funding for faith-based rehabilitation programs is literally a no-brainer. Not only could New Jersey save millions of dollars each year by substituting rehabilitation costs for incarceration costs for non-violent prisoners, but by slashing recidivism rates, the state would also be cutting expenses far into the future.

The New Jersey Office of Face Based Initiatives may have spent its first decade in relative obscurity, but it’s high time for that to change. New Jersey has a unique opportunity to immediately implement real and effective cost-cutting measures. Indeed, to avoid doing so would be a gross disservice to the state’s overburdened taxpayers. 

 

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