juliwaits
12-20-2004, 05:12 PM
From Arkansas News Bureau:
Do we need more prisons?
Friday, Dec 17, 2004
By Jack Moseley
How many prisons are enough? Arkansas currently is adding 200 additional prison beds for female offenders, who are being sentenced to hard time at a rate that is growing faster than the number of male convicts.
Moreover, the Arkansas Department of Correction wants an additional $73.4 million over the next two years, and millions of that money will go to add still more convict facilities - 850 more beds for men and an additional 250 for women. That's on top of the 200 that are already being built for women, of course.
If the prison system gets everything it's requesting from the Legislature next year, it's annual budget will grow by $36.2 million annually over the current $206 million per year.
Folks, this is big business. Other states are moving to reduce the number of convicts behind bars and employ electronic monitoring, drug courts and other innovations aimed at holding down the skyrocketing costs of our so-called criminal justice system. Arkansas, however, appears to be feeding its prison bureaucracy, making lockup punishment one of the state's most rapidly expanding growth industries.
Other states are repealing laws that require inmates to serve large percentages of their sentences for certain convictions. That approach simply has not worked, but Arkansas apparently hasn't gotten the message. It continues to have a law that requires selected offenders - mostly drug abusers - to serve 70 percent of their sentences before they can be considered for parole. Under the so-called 70 percent rule, some nonviolent offenders, who can earn good time, do more prison time than people convicted of killing and injuring innocent citizens.
Meanwhile, taxpayers are paying $47.24 cents every day for every one of the 13,700-plus inmates of this state's prison system. That adds up to more than $16,000 per convict per year.
While Arkansas lawmakers seem to be among the last Americans to understand that something is terribly wrong with our criminal justice system, this whole nation still has miles to go in prison reform. We send men and women to prison quicker and in greater numbers in relation to our population than any civilized nation on earth. On any day, the United States has 2 million or more human beings behind bars. That translates into 482 convicted felons in state and federal prisons for every 100,000 population.
And what does this massive prison industry cost the taxpayers? Would you believe the annual expense is approaching $40 billion? That's a fact, but it represents only a fraction of the actual costs.
When breadwinners are locked up for long periods of time, their wives and children go on welfare rolls. That means food stamps, rent subsidies, aid to families with dependent children, taxpayer-paid health care through Medicaid, etc. We all pay a heavy price for crime in this country and it will become an even greater burden if we continue to act like the only way to deal with any lawbreaker is to be tough on crime, lock him up and forget about him until we make him really mean and really dangerous, then turn him back on the streets to live among us.
Such an attitude reflects fuzzy thinking, bad business and bad government, even if a lot of politicians see it as a way to get re-elected. It means our schools, our sick kids and elderly get shortchanged to pay for something that isn't working but remains popular with a majority of the voters. And not just in Arkansas.
Arkansas lawmakers in the thinking minority are beginning to talk about repealing our 70 percent rule law next year. That will be a good start. Another step in the right direction would be to reward parole offices that keep parolees from being sent back to prison instead of sometimes seemingly encouraging parolees to fail while seeing just how many paroles they can revoke. After all, if you're a parole officer and you send a fellow back to prison, you don't have to worry about him, do you?
This is not an original thought. It reflects what more than one lawman has said to me in private conversations.
Some people obviously deserve to be locked up for the safety of society. Others can be punished in a variety of other ways. There is mounting evidence that nonconfinement, community-based punishment keeps far more felony criminals from becoming repeat offenders than simply shipping them off to Cummins, Tucker or any of the 19 prison facilities in this state. And its one heck of a lot cheaper.
Do we need more prisons?
Friday, Dec 17, 2004
By Jack Moseley
How many prisons are enough? Arkansas currently is adding 200 additional prison beds for female offenders, who are being sentenced to hard time at a rate that is growing faster than the number of male convicts.
Moreover, the Arkansas Department of Correction wants an additional $73.4 million over the next two years, and millions of that money will go to add still more convict facilities - 850 more beds for men and an additional 250 for women. That's on top of the 200 that are already being built for women, of course.
If the prison system gets everything it's requesting from the Legislature next year, it's annual budget will grow by $36.2 million annually over the current $206 million per year.
Folks, this is big business. Other states are moving to reduce the number of convicts behind bars and employ electronic monitoring, drug courts and other innovations aimed at holding down the skyrocketing costs of our so-called criminal justice system. Arkansas, however, appears to be feeding its prison bureaucracy, making lockup punishment one of the state's most rapidly expanding growth industries.
Other states are repealing laws that require inmates to serve large percentages of their sentences for certain convictions. That approach simply has not worked, but Arkansas apparently hasn't gotten the message. It continues to have a law that requires selected offenders - mostly drug abusers - to serve 70 percent of their sentences before they can be considered for parole. Under the so-called 70 percent rule, some nonviolent offenders, who can earn good time, do more prison time than people convicted of killing and injuring innocent citizens.
Meanwhile, taxpayers are paying $47.24 cents every day for every one of the 13,700-plus inmates of this state's prison system. That adds up to more than $16,000 per convict per year.
While Arkansas lawmakers seem to be among the last Americans to understand that something is terribly wrong with our criminal justice system, this whole nation still has miles to go in prison reform. We send men and women to prison quicker and in greater numbers in relation to our population than any civilized nation on earth. On any day, the United States has 2 million or more human beings behind bars. That translates into 482 convicted felons in state and federal prisons for every 100,000 population.
And what does this massive prison industry cost the taxpayers? Would you believe the annual expense is approaching $40 billion? That's a fact, but it represents only a fraction of the actual costs.
When breadwinners are locked up for long periods of time, their wives and children go on welfare rolls. That means food stamps, rent subsidies, aid to families with dependent children, taxpayer-paid health care through Medicaid, etc. We all pay a heavy price for crime in this country and it will become an even greater burden if we continue to act like the only way to deal with any lawbreaker is to be tough on crime, lock him up and forget about him until we make him really mean and really dangerous, then turn him back on the streets to live among us.
Such an attitude reflects fuzzy thinking, bad business and bad government, even if a lot of politicians see it as a way to get re-elected. It means our schools, our sick kids and elderly get shortchanged to pay for something that isn't working but remains popular with a majority of the voters. And not just in Arkansas.
Arkansas lawmakers in the thinking minority are beginning to talk about repealing our 70 percent rule law next year. That will be a good start. Another step in the right direction would be to reward parole offices that keep parolees from being sent back to prison instead of sometimes seemingly encouraging parolees to fail while seeing just how many paroles they can revoke. After all, if you're a parole officer and you send a fellow back to prison, you don't have to worry about him, do you?
This is not an original thought. It reflects what more than one lawman has said to me in private conversations.
Some people obviously deserve to be locked up for the safety of society. Others can be punished in a variety of other ways. There is mounting evidence that nonconfinement, community-based punishment keeps far more felony criminals from becoming repeat offenders than simply shipping them off to Cummins, Tucker or any of the 19 prison facilities in this state. And its one heck of a lot cheaper.