JUDICIAL INTERVENTION AND LOCAL SPENDING - THE CASE OF LOCAL JAILS

This study develops a methodology for examining the impact of court or ders on local budgets and applies it to one of the most important area s of judicial involvement-local jails. During the 1980s an increasing number of local jails came under court order due to overcrowded facili ties. In many counties this has been matched by equally rapid growth i n 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, p ast research on judicial intervention may be misleading because of ina dequate controls for other factors that may affect both jail capacity and spending. We examine the determinants of jail spending for a natio nal sample of jails in the mid-1980s. Our results indicate that court orders influence capacity expansion (their impact on current expenditu res 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 it-not when forced by the courts to act.