By Chris Bowman, Contributing Writer

There are no sacred fiscal cows for State Senator Dave Argall. In the interest of trimming the state’s bloated prison budget, he recently proposed a plan to release on parole thousand of non-violent offenders. In an op-ed to the Times News, Argall called for support “reducing the number of low-risk non-violent offenders in state prisons” in an effort to reduce the State budget deficit.

“It costs the state approximately $40,000 per year for each inmate in state prisons and roughly $18,000 for prisoners in county prisons. However, it costs just $1,250 per year to monitor prisoners released on probation and approximately $2,750 per year for prisoners who are released on parole,” he wrote.

Argall previously voted in support of SB 1161, the bill “Authorizing Qualified Inmate Transfer to Pre-release Centers.” Argall’s Commission approved this 2010 report supporting the reduction of prisoners in state prisons as a means to curb the budget.

Such reforms, Argall explains, could shave $350 million off the State budget in the next 4 years. This year’s budget for the Department of Corrections is $1.7 billion. This cost-cutting move echoes his fiscally-conservative stance during the 2010 election in which he highlighted Tim Holden’s unpopular vote for President Obama’s stimulus package.

It appears that he has some company on the other side of the aisle. Capitolwire reported that House Minority Leader Frank Dermody (D-Allegheny) is also looking to cut prison costs.

“We’ve got to get smarter on corrections, and we can,” Dermody said. “We have the wherewithal to get smarter about how we do corrections and how we identify those who need to go away for longer periods of time. And once we get smarter about this, that’s one place where we can save money and we need to.”

Keegan Gibson contributed to this report.