WHB/2/4
Sponsored by Ryan Karcher, Jackson Frazier of Evangelical Christian School
This legislation was filed in the Correction category
Presented as part of the YIG Volunteer 2024 conference
| 1 | BE IT ENACTED BY THE TENNESSEE YMCA YOUTH IN GOVERNMENT |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Section 1: Terms in this act will be defined as follows: |
| 4 | Prison overcrowding: An overpopulation that occurs when the demand for space in prisons in a |
| 5 | jurisdiction exceeds the capacity for prisoners. This can occur due to a state’s high crime or |
| 6 | incarceration rate, limited staff, and a lack of infrastructure. |
| 7 | Criminal Rehabilitation: The process of helping inmates grow and change, allowing them to |
| 8 | separate themselves from the factors that influenced them to commit a crime. |
| 9 | Recidivism: A person’s relapse into criminal behavior, the rate at which a person returns to prison |
| 10 | following release. High recidivism rates are often associated with poor prison conditions, lack of |
| 11 | criminal rehabilitation services, prison overcrowding, and high vacancy rates within prisons. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Section 2: This act will allocate $1 billion from the Tennessee Department of Correction over the |
| 14 | course of 5 years towards reducing prison overcrowding, improving state prisons and county jails, |
| 15 | filling staffing vacancies, and providing criminal rehabilitative services throughout the state. The |
| 16 | state of Tennessee will build two rehabilitation centers, costing $80 million each, and the |
| 17 | remainder of this money will be used at the discretion of the correctional administrator. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Section 3: This money will be restructured from the budget of the Tennessee Department of |
| 20 | Correction. Providing rehabilitation services will lead to an estimated 10% decrease or more in |
| 21 | recidivism rates over the course of a decade, a rate that currently costs the state over $150 million |
| 22 | dollars per year. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | Section 4: All laws or parts of laws in conflict with this are hereby repealed. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | Section 5: This act shall take effect June 1st, 2026. |
| 27 |