NO END IN SIGHT TO CORRECTIONS DEMANDS

News that the Corrections Department needs more money is now so
routine that citizens probably pay little attention to it. The latest
request was related in a seven-paragraph article on page A-11 of
Wednesday's Tulsa World, headlined in typical fashion: "Prison budget
hikes called not enough."

Will it ever get through to lawmakers and others that throwing money
down a bottomless pit is not going to address corrections problems?

Even a scorecard won't keep you up to date on the endless requests.
The latest article indicated that a $7 million supplemental
appropriation and an $11 million supplement already approved will not
be enough to finish out this fiscal year. Corrections officials say
the department needs another $12 million to make it through June 30.

At the same time, lawmakers were putting the finishing touches on a
$387 million corrections budget for the upcoming fiscal year -- a sum
that certainly will not be enough.

Corrections is a resource gobbler, annually sucking tens of millions
of dollars from more worthwhile purposes, such as education. But the
state continues to send ever-larger numbers of offenders to prison for
longer sentences.

This view is not altogether sound, as the experience of other states
demonstrates. Most other states send fewer offenders to jail yet do
not have substantially different crime rates. Certain offenders --
nonviolent and drug offenders, among others -- sometimes can be
"rehabilitated" through measures other than long prison terms.
Oklahoma has tinkered with this concept, through establishment of drug
courts and pilot community sentencing efforts, but hasn't exactly
warmed up to the idea.

Paying more attention to the front end -- with adequate education and
early childhood services and programs for those who might end up in
prison -- is another approach finally being embraced. But again, it's
only been dabbled in.

Unless Oklahoma gets more serious about how to address criminal
behavior in ways other than draining the treasury to fund prisons,
that will continue to be where most of the money goes.