PRISON COSTS SKYROCKET

If prison and jail population numbers are any indication, the United States
is a nation of lawbreakers avidly playing the odds. According to a report
Sunday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about one of every 143 U.S.
residents was behind bars at the end of last year.

The total number of prisoners was a staggering 2.1 million. There were 5,423
prisoners in the Hawaii penal system, including 313 as of Monday at the Maui
Community Correctional Center. To put those numbers in perspective, imagine
emptying every prison and jail cell in the country. If every man, woman and
child -- including tourists -- in the islands today were put in those cells,
there would still be about 700,000 empty cells.

The cost of all those prisoners -- about $20,000 a year per inmate, not
counting the $100,000 per cell construction cost -- is also staggering, an
estimated total of $40 billion a year being paid by taxpayers. That's the
bad news. The good news is that preliminary FBI statistics show a 0.2
percent drop in crime while the prison population was increasing 2.6
percent.

The increase in the U.S. prison population -- Hawaii's total figures stayed
roughly the same between 2001 and 2002 -- continues a 30-year trend toward
imprisoning more white-collar and nonviolent drug-related criminals. Drug
offenders make up more than half of all federal prisoners.

The get-tough approach is cited by law enforcement officials as the reason
for the overall decline in crime in the United States. There might be an
even greater deterrent if the punishment was meted out more quickly. As it
is, any accused lawbreaker can count on months expiring between arrest and
incarceration, partly due to the exercise of defense rights, but mostly due
to understaffed prosecutor offices and overloaded court calendars. It is
also a good bet that if the accused can hire the right kind of legal talent,
punishment may be avoided completely.

Punishment -- versus rehabilitation and treatment of drug problems -- is a
most effective deterrent to crime only if it is quickly and universally
applied, and defendants today face a crapshoot with house odds in their
favor.