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Community Corrections Expected To Get $80M In State Budget

Thomas Hawk
/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/

The final budget proposal released Tuesday provides around $80 million for community corrections programs.

The amount is in between the House and Senate budget proposals.

The House budget would have appropriated more than $80 million additional for community corrections, while the Senate came in at $56 million.

The money in the new proposal goes to the state, which then doles it out via grants to local programs.

Senate budget architect Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, says all the stakeholders involved will have to make progress reports every three months.

“Some of the concerns are, the locals are saying, ‘You’re going to stick us with the bill,’ the state is saying, ‘You’re going to take all the money and we don’t know that we got a result for it,’” he says. ” So this is going to be a developing program and so we’re going to have to have some checks and balances.”

Kenley says the budget does give a little new money to the Department of Correction, but not for them to build new facilities at state prisons.

“But if the DOC actually ends up saving money because of the loss of a lot of prisoners, that that money can be focused back into the community corrections pot,” he says.

Lawmakers will approve the two-year state budget Wednesday.  

Brandon Smith is excited to be working for public radio in Indiana. He has previously worked in public radio as a reporter and anchor in mid-Missouri for KBIA Radio out of Columbia. Prior to that, he worked for WSPY Radio in Plano, Illinois as a show host, reporter, producer and anchor. His first job in radio was in another state capitol, in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a reporter for three radio stations around Missouri. Brandon graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism in 2010, with minors in political science and history. He was born and raised in Chicago.
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