Safer Kentucky Act could cost $1 billion over next decade, economic policy group says
A controversial anti-crime bill passed by the Kentucky House in January could cost the state Department of Corrections an estimated $1 billion more over the next decade, according to an analysis released Tuesday.
To put that in context, the state budget recently proposed by the House would spend $748 million on the Department of Corrections in Fiscal Year 2025 and $778 million in Fiscal 2026, for a two-year total of $1.52 billion.
The anti-crime bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jared Bauman, R-Louisville, did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Bauman’s House Bill 5 has awaited action by the Senate Judiciary Committee for the past month.
The nonpartisan Kentucky Center for Economic Policy in Berea said most of the anti-crime bill’s enormous cost would come from an increase in the number of crimes classified as “violent offenses,” putting more people behind bars and leaving them there longer.
Getting convicted as a violent offender in Kentucky requires inmates to serve at least 85% of their prison sentence rather than 20%.
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A lengthy floor amendment was added to the bill just before the House approved it Jan. 25, adding even more newly classified violent offenses without much discussion.
Legislative analysts at the Capitol have described the potential costs of the bill as “significant,” or more than $1 million.
But nobody put an actual price tag on it until the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy studied it in depth and used the state’s open records law to obtain data about prison inmate numbers and incarceration costs, said Pam Thomas, a senior fellow at the center.
“People kept asking, ‘What will this cost us? And the only answer so far has been, ‘Well, a lot,’” Thomas said.
The Center’s estimate does not include additional costs that would be faced by local jails, which hold inmates awaiting trial and serving short-term misdemeanor sentences, Thomas said.
Thomas said much of the attention paid to the anti-crime bill so far has gone to a section that would create the crime of “unlawful camping” for public homelessness. A first offense would be a violation, which could bring a $250 fine. Future offenses would be a Class B misdemeanor.
But it’s the bill’s expansion of the violent offender statute to include many new offenses, including some lower-level offenses that don’t involve an intent to cause physical harm, that threatens to overflow Kentucky’s state prisons and local jails, Thomas said.
“It’s going to stack them on top of each other, on top of each other, on top of each other, until you reach a critical mass, and then it’s going to maintain there,” she said. “It’s going to definitely increase the amount that’s spent on corrections, the number of people who grow old in prison and the need for facilities to deal with old people.”
The extra cost to taxpayers might be worth it if research showed that mandatory enhanced sentences deterred crime, Thomas said, but it does not. Typically, people commit violent crimes when they are younger, and they age out of that lifestyle long before many of these inmates would be released under the bill, she said.
Among its additions to the violent offender statute, the bill would include attempted murder, first-degree burglary if someone other than the burglar is present at the scene; first-degree wanton endangerment; second-degree robbery; first-degree strangulation; carjacking; and first-degree arson.
The bill also broadens the 15 crimes or categories of crimes that already are designated as violent offenses to include their lower-level Class C and Class D felony versions, not just their higher-level Class A and Class B felony versions.
And the bill would:
▪ Create a “three strikes and you’re out” law. Kentuckians convicted of violent felonies on three separate occasions would face life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for the third offense.
▪ Deny probation, parole or any other form of conditional release for people convicted of a crime in which they possessed a gun in violation of state law, including felons in possession of a gun or guns that were stolen, defaced or loaded with restricted ammunition.
▪ Elevate criminal charges by one offense level for adults convicted of engaging in a conspiracy with minors.
▪ Expand Kentucky’s death penalty eligibility to include murder of a “first responder” — such as a police officer, firefighter or emergency medical worker — who was killed in the line of duty.
▪ Elevate the offense of first-degree fleeing or evading police from a Class D to a Class C felony and require at least half of the prison sentence to be served before parole eligibility.
▪ Deny probation, parole or any other form of conditional release for people convicted of a crime in which they possessed a gun in violation of state law, including felons in possession of a gun or guns that were stolen, defaced or loaded with restricted ammunition.
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