PRISON NUMBERS: SOME GOOD NEWS

For decades now, courts in the United States have been sticking more and
more people -- mostly young men -- into prisons, and if the numbers were
viewed as an index of societal accomplishment, something to be proud of,
this land could declare itself an international exemplar. After all, no
nation puts as high a percentage of its people behind bars as ours. But
while prisons undeniably serve crucial functions, such as keeping killers
off the streets, they are erected because of things that have gone terribly
wrong in society, not things that have gone right -- and what they are best
at is wasting human lives.

It is therefore heartening to learn that, for the first time in 30 years,
the population of state prisons declined over a six-month period. It is
heartening, as well, to learn that one of the reasons is the rise of
alternative programs for drug offenders.

The decline is striking only in contrast to what was happening previously.

For the first half of 2000, the numbers actually went up. Then they went
down. The year witnessed an overall increase of 1.3 percent, bringing the
number of state inmates to 1,228,455, according to the Justice Department.
It's an increase that begins to sound good when you seat it next to the
rate of expansion for the past decade, about 6 percent a year.

Criminologists are quoted in press accounts as saying the new numbers are
likely an indication of what is to come: no-growth years.

They point to a number of reasons, including greater leniency on questions
of parole. There is also impressive social invention going on. Communities
are coming up with innovative, effective programs to help drug abusers end
their addiction, and judges are telling many of those convicted of
non-violent drug offenses that they can stay out of prisons if they will
participate.

The prisons by and large do nothing or very little to treat addicts, which
can mean renewed trouble for everyone when the addicts are released, as
someday they will be.

For the states, imprisonment rates that stabilize or perhaps decline would
mean money saved -- building costs have been in the multibillions the past
10 years. The more significant savings, though, would be the thousands who
have a chance to find constructive lives instead of suffering through the
non-existence of incarceration.