BULGING PRISONS

Sentencing Laws Keep Inmates Behind Bars Longer

New census data show what many citizens will regard as alarming news: The
state's prison and jail population has grown rapidly, nearly doubling
within the last decade. But it's important to bear in mind this fact: That
growth rate is about what state officials expected when they revamped the
state's sentencing laws and rebuilt state prisons.

When the 1990s began, North Carolina was struggling with a big prison
problem. It had a record prison population and an aging, inadequate prison
system to house criminals. Many offenders were serving only a fraction of
their sentences. The image of a revolving-door prison was apt.

That predicament launched a rewriting of the state's criminal sentencing
laws and a virtual rebuilding of the prison system. Central to the effort
was a new sentencing scheme requiring inmates to serve their full
sentences. "Truth in sentencing," it was called: After it took effect, a
10-year sentence would mean 10 years in prison - no time off for good
behavior, no parole.

First-time and lesser offenders might be punished through a combination of
shorter prison stays and community punishment alternatives. Computer models
were developed so that state officials could predict more accurately the
growth of the prison population and make recommendations for future prison
needs.

A decade ago, the state's prison system held 18,622 inmates, about 60
percent of them black. At the end of 2000, the inmate population was up to
31,534, about 63 percent black. The N.C. Sentencing and Policy Advisory
Commission, which tracks the prison population and the need for additional
cell space, says the overall prison population figure was in line with
computer forecasts based on the Structured Sentencing Law.

The prison population has grown not because crime rates are up - they are
down in recent years - but because the new sentencing law requires inmates
to serve longer terms than they were serving under previous laws.
Ironically, the number of inmates sentenced to prison is down, but because
they must serve their full sentences (and longer for misbehavior), prison
stays are longer and the population will continue to grow.

The increase in the number of black inmates should raise concerns about the
state's criminal justice system. For example, there is evidence that while
blacks and whites use drugs in about the same rates, a higher proportion of
black drug offenders go to prison. Prison is one result of the impacts of
substance abuse, school dropout rates and the breakup of families on young
black men, but prison isn't likely to be the solution for any of those
problems.

Thanks to careful monitoring of conviction rates and sentencing changes,
the state has a better way to keep up with future prison needs. It has
access to forecasts of the need for costly new prison cells, especially
single-cell space for violent inmates. And it has more information on
appropriate uses of alternatives to incarceration, which reduce the need
for new cells.

Violent offenders with long records obviously belong in prison for extended
periods. That's the state's policy, and it's a good one. But as the state
prison population approaches a forecast 40,000 inmates by the end of the
decade, policymakers will have to develop better ways to punish those for
whom extended incarceration makes little fiscal or correctional sense.