REFORM SENTENCING

Demands to do something about prisons are piling up on
lawmakers

South Carolina's prison director has told lawmakers the state needs
two new prisons just to hold the number of inmates it already has.

The chief justice of the state Supreme Court has called on lawmakers
to keep violent offenders in prison longer and devise alternatives to
incarceration for nonviolent offenders.

And the attorney general has suggested a similar plan - no parole for
violent criminals and non-prison punishments for others.

Lawmakers must start to listen.

As Chief Justice Jean Toal told them last week: "A lot of voices have
been heard in all branches of government, but this is really your
leadership issue more than any other. You can bring together all of
the stakeholders. ... It doesn't need to take years."

The General Assembly needs to do something now. The state can't
afford to keep more than 24,000 people locked up in overcrowded,
understaffed prisons.

The cost to the state is tremendous. Even though South Carolina has
the lowest annual cost per inmate in the nation at $14,000, it's
still expensive. It will become even more expensive if the state
decides to do the job properly and build and adequately staff more
prisons.

This situation also imposes costs on local governments. Counties have
to keep inmates in county jails longer, making them overcrowded,
driving up costs and pushing them to build more jail capacity.

The social cost is enormous. Families are broken apart by prison
sentences, causing an additional economic burden on the state through
welfare benefits and impacting the future of inmates' children.

Toal and Attorney General Henry McMaster have pointed lawmakers
toward a direction that makes more sense. They want violent
criminals, those who need to be taken out of society, kept in prison
longer. And they want the state to make that possible by sentencing
nonviolent offenders to something other than prison.

The state should expand the use and scope of drug courts to push drug
offenders into court-supervised treatment, keeping them out of prison.

Lawmakers should authorize alternative sentences for other nonviolent
offenders. These offenders can be put to work laboring for local
governments when they are not working their regular jobs. They can be
sentenced to lengthy community service commitments and restitution.
They can be placed under monitored house arrest.

If prisons are reserved for violent offenders, those dangerous
criminals can be kept there longer, and other offenders can be
punished within society so that their families and jobs can be
maintained. Such a system would cost all levels of government and
society much less.