Pogo
09-25-2002, 01:28 PM
Prison explosion: Bring back sanity
By Register Editorial Board
09/22/2002
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If it were possible to turn back the clock to 1994, when Iowa's four prisons held about 5,000 inmates, the state would be spending $60 million less than it is today.
The difference: 3,000 inmates. That's how many inmates Iowa has added to its prisons since 1994. It built three new prisons to house them, and on average it costs $20 million a year to feed and clothe the inmates in each prison, to maintain the buildings and to pay the salaries of guards who must be on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
That is $60 million the state could spend in many other ways. It could, for example, give a generous raise to every Iowa schoolteacher, modernize rural school buildings or hold down tuition at state universities. It could give the Department of Natural Resources money to clean up Iowa's air and water or to build more parks and trails. It could move Iowa off the bottom of the list of state aid to cultural affairs.
If Iowa political leaders had the options put before them today, which would they choose: Schools? A clean environment? Arts? Or, prisons? The reality is our elected leaders have chosen prisons at the expense of other state priorities. They have dismissed the evidence repeatedly put before their eyes. As a consequence, Iowa's criminal sentencing is out of control; Iowa has led the nation in prison growth despite a barely growing population and declining or flat crime rates.
The Iowa prison-population rocket took off in 1994 (see accompanying chart). But to get a fuller perspective on this state's extraordinary prison growth, it's helpful to turn the clock back even further.
The first prison in Iowa was a territorial prison built in Fort Madison in 1839. Part of the original wall stands guard there today. For more than a century, Iowa made do with that prison, plus a reformatory for male offenders opened in Anamosa in 1872 and a women's prison opened in Rockwell City in 1918. The prison population remained relatively constant for 90 years, except for a spike during the Depression.
Then, in the '80s and '90s, Iowa prisoner numbers went crazy.
It wasn't that the crime rate had increased. It hadn't. It wasn't that Iowans were more criminal in nature. They weren't. It wasn't that Iowa's population had increased. It hadn't.
It was simply that lawmakers chose to get "tough on crime." They passed laws creating more mandatory sentences and longer prison terms, and escalated the war on drugs.
Since 1986, Iowa's prison population has tripled, to more than 8,000 inmates. The state has spent tens of millions building three new prisons and major additions at other institutions, adding cells in every nook and cranny and squeezing three inmates into cells designed for one or two. Still, the state is housing about 1,200 more inmates than it has room for and 600 more than the Legislature is willing to pay for.
This is only part of the story. During that same time period, Iowa has constructed an extensive community-based corrections system, which includes halfway houses and release programs designed to keep people out of prison. Iowa is rightly praised for this hugely successful program, which has more than 26,000 people under court supervision. Without it, though, many of those people would be behind bars. And none of this accounts for convicts sitting in county jails because the prisons are full.
The future looks even worse. While the state Board of Parole has in the past two years done an admirable job of releasing non-violent inmates, a recent state study says that is just papering over the reality: At the current rate of prosecutions, convictions and incarceration, Iowa's prison population can be expected to grow by another 4,000 inmates in 10 years, meaning Iowa will have more than 12,000 people in confinement.
The implications of that figure are staggering: That means five more prisons, at $50 million a copy in construction costs. And that is just the beginning. It costs $20 million a year to run each prison. Thus, Iowa will be spending another $100 million a year on prisons that it won't have for schools, the environment, the arts.
The political reality is that once a prison gets built, it is next to impossible to close it. There is no turning back the clock. So the question is where Iowa goes from here: Will it continue on this path, or will it revise its criminal-sentencing laws and save hundreds of millions of future dollars to spend on something other than warehousing prisoners?
The purpose of this editorial series is to examine the choices Iowa has made and to explore whether different choices would allow Iowans to make better use of available resources.
Sending more people to prison for longer periods was a poor choice. Iowa got along fine for a century with a relatively low incarceration rate. While there may be no turning back, there's no reason to continue this crazy prison-expansion binge.
By Register Editorial Board
09/22/2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If it were possible to turn back the clock to 1994, when Iowa's four prisons held about 5,000 inmates, the state would be spending $60 million less than it is today.
The difference: 3,000 inmates. That's how many inmates Iowa has added to its prisons since 1994. It built three new prisons to house them, and on average it costs $20 million a year to feed and clothe the inmates in each prison, to maintain the buildings and to pay the salaries of guards who must be on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
That is $60 million the state could spend in many other ways. It could, for example, give a generous raise to every Iowa schoolteacher, modernize rural school buildings or hold down tuition at state universities. It could give the Department of Natural Resources money to clean up Iowa's air and water or to build more parks and trails. It could move Iowa off the bottom of the list of state aid to cultural affairs.
If Iowa political leaders had the options put before them today, which would they choose: Schools? A clean environment? Arts? Or, prisons? The reality is our elected leaders have chosen prisons at the expense of other state priorities. They have dismissed the evidence repeatedly put before their eyes. As a consequence, Iowa's criminal sentencing is out of control; Iowa has led the nation in prison growth despite a barely growing population and declining or flat crime rates.
The Iowa prison-population rocket took off in 1994 (see accompanying chart). But to get a fuller perspective on this state's extraordinary prison growth, it's helpful to turn the clock back even further.
The first prison in Iowa was a territorial prison built in Fort Madison in 1839. Part of the original wall stands guard there today. For more than a century, Iowa made do with that prison, plus a reformatory for male offenders opened in Anamosa in 1872 and a women's prison opened in Rockwell City in 1918. The prison population remained relatively constant for 90 years, except for a spike during the Depression.
Then, in the '80s and '90s, Iowa prisoner numbers went crazy.
It wasn't that the crime rate had increased. It hadn't. It wasn't that Iowans were more criminal in nature. They weren't. It wasn't that Iowa's population had increased. It hadn't.
It was simply that lawmakers chose to get "tough on crime." They passed laws creating more mandatory sentences and longer prison terms, and escalated the war on drugs.
Since 1986, Iowa's prison population has tripled, to more than 8,000 inmates. The state has spent tens of millions building three new prisons and major additions at other institutions, adding cells in every nook and cranny and squeezing three inmates into cells designed for one or two. Still, the state is housing about 1,200 more inmates than it has room for and 600 more than the Legislature is willing to pay for.
This is only part of the story. During that same time period, Iowa has constructed an extensive community-based corrections system, which includes halfway houses and release programs designed to keep people out of prison. Iowa is rightly praised for this hugely successful program, which has more than 26,000 people under court supervision. Without it, though, many of those people would be behind bars. And none of this accounts for convicts sitting in county jails because the prisons are full.
The future looks even worse. While the state Board of Parole has in the past two years done an admirable job of releasing non-violent inmates, a recent state study says that is just papering over the reality: At the current rate of prosecutions, convictions and incarceration, Iowa's prison population can be expected to grow by another 4,000 inmates in 10 years, meaning Iowa will have more than 12,000 people in confinement.
The implications of that figure are staggering: That means five more prisons, at $50 million a copy in construction costs. And that is just the beginning. It costs $20 million a year to run each prison. Thus, Iowa will be spending another $100 million a year on prisons that it won't have for schools, the environment, the arts.
The political reality is that once a prison gets built, it is next to impossible to close it. There is no turning back the clock. So the question is where Iowa goes from here: Will it continue on this path, or will it revise its criminal-sentencing laws and save hundreds of millions of future dollars to spend on something other than warehousing prisoners?
The purpose of this editorial series is to examine the choices Iowa has made and to explore whether different choices would allow Iowans to make better use of available resources.
Sending more people to prison for longer periods was a poor choice. Iowa got along fine for a century with a relatively low incarceration rate. While there may be no turning back, there's no reason to continue this crazy prison-expansion binge.