Judicial Intervention and Local Spending |
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| Authors: | William D Duncombe Jeffrey D Straussman |
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| Institution: | William Duncombe;is assistant professor of public administration and senior research associate, Center for Policy Research, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University. He and Roy Bahl are the authors of Economic Growth &Fiscal Planning: New York in the 1990s(New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1991), and he has published articles in the areas of fiscal health, school finance, government costs, and budgeting in state and local governments. Jeffrey D. Straussman;is professor of public administration, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University. He received his Ph.D. degree (1975) from the Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York, in political science. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Budapest University (Hungary) in 1992. He is coauthor of Public Management Strategies: Guidelines for Managerial Effectiveness (1990, with B. Bozeman), and numerous articles in the areas of public budgeting and public management. |
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| Abstract: | This study develops a methodology for examining the impact of court orders on local budgets and applies it to one of the most important areas of judicial involvement-local jails. During the 1980s an increasing number of local jails came under court order due to overcrowded facilities. In many counties this has been matched by equally rapid growth in jail capacity and expenditures. Based on simple comparisons of these trends and case studies of individual counties, previous research on court intervention has concluded that the courts have forced reluctant local governments to increase expenditures on corrections. However, past research on judicial intervention may be misleading because of inadequate controls for other factors that may affect both jail capacity and spending. We examine the determinants of jail spending for a national sample of jails in the mid-1980s. Our results indicate that court orders influence capacity expansion (their impact on current expenditures is less clear); however, other jail and demand factors may have a stronger effect. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our findings suggest that many jurisdictions, given adequate fiscal resources, budget for jail expansion when they need its not when forced by the courts to act. |
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