CUTTING THE PRISON RATE SAFELY

The news that more than 1 in 100 adults in our country are behind bars
shocked many Americans, but it shouldn't have come as a surprise.

The U.S. incarceration rate has been marching toward this milestone
for three decades, a result of policy choices that put more offenders
in prison and keep them there longer. Harsher sentencing laws, more
restrictive parole policies and the practice of locking up people who
have violated the rules of their probation or parole have been driving
up the inmate population since the early 1980s.

What is remarkable, and has been highlighted alongside the
incarceration figures in a recent report from the Pew Center on the
States, is that our states, Kansas and Texas, and others are finding
effective ways to fight crime and punish criminals without breaking
the bank on prisons.

Locking up 2.3 million people has undoubtedly helped reduce the
nation's crime rate. And we certainly believe that violent and chronic
criminals deserve a good, long term behind bars.

Yet high numbers of nonviolent, lower-risk criminals have been swept
up in the prison boom. Getting tough on them has gotten tough on
taxpayers, without an adequate public safety benefit. A prison cell
costs about $65,000 to build and $24,000 a year to operate. States
spend nearly $50 billion a year on corrections, more than four times
the amount from 20 years ago, and they are projected to spend an
additional $25 billion over the next five years to accommodate more
inmates.

For this much money the public expects lower recidivism rates and
safer communities. Yet crime rates are still too high. Recidivism
rates are still too high. And corrections spending is crowding out
dollars for other pressing priorities such as health care and education.

Like many of our performance-minded colleagues across the country, we
have wondered whether we are getting our money's worth out of prisons.
For violent offenders and sex offenders, the answer is yes. For many
nonviolent offenders and probation violators, the answer is no. We've
got to find a better way.

Many states are doing just that. In law-and-order Texas, we expanded a
network of residential treatment centers for low-risk,
substance-abusing offenders in prison and under community supervision,
as well as intermediate-sanction facilities for probation and parole
violators. Texas might avoid increased incarceration costs for the
next five years, saving taxpayers millions of dollars, according to
the latest projections.

After Kansas found that nearly two-thirds of its prison admissions
were probation and parole violators, the legislature set up an
incentive program for community corrections programs. Counties that
cut their revocation rates by 20 percent will get a share of new state
funding a?" money made available because of averted prison
construction a?" to help them hold violators accountable without using
up prison cells.

Other states are taking similar steps. We aren't going soft on crime;
we're getting smart on crime.

Our country has a million more prison beds today than it did just 20
years ago, yet the average time served behind bars has increased by
only six months, to about three years. Holding inmates an extra six
months costs a bundle, but greater reductions in recidivism may be
achieved by the alternative treatment and sanctioning programs that
have begun to be funded.

For the same price, we can put four offenders through a drug court or
re-entry program and actually alter the course of their criminal
careers. Research has shown that by using new technologies and
treatment strategies, community corrections programs can cut rates of
repeat offenses by 25 percent. Rather than claiming new victims, these
offenders have a decent shot at rejoining society, paying taxes and
supporting their children.

Public safety spending, like other areas of government responsibility,
is not exempt from the test of cost-benefit analysis. Taxpayers want
the job done as effectively as possible. It's up to us as policymakers
to consider all of the options and create an array of punishments and
programs that deliver the biggest public-safety bang for the buck.

John Vratil, a Republican from Kansas, is vice president of the state Senate
and chairs its Judiciary Committee. John Whitmire, a Democrat from Texas, is
the senior member of the state Senate and chairs its Criminal Justice
Committee.