RESERVE CELLS FOR VIOLENT OFFENDERS

Word comes down that legislatures across America are considering ways
to save dollars on their prison budget as the economic slowdown starts
affecting revenue figures in state capitals. They're considering
alternative sentencing methods as a way to free up millions of dollars
in spending. While one's first hunch might be to not be surprised that
prisons might get shortchanged when money gets tight, we can also look
at this as an opportunity for states, including North Carolina, to
change the way that they decide who is going to prison.

We'd like to see the General Assembly rethink its recent trend of
increasingly adding active sentences to a lot of crimes. And, in
particular, we'd like to see lawmakers start moving away from throwing
people in prison for non-violent crimes.

A quick scan of the Department of Correction Web page shows that
39,100 people are incarcerated in North Carolina's prisons. A check on
the Web site also reveals that over the past year, more than 5,989 men
and women were incarcerated for drug charges.

Add to that other non-violent crimes, such as worthless checks, DWI,
other traffic violations and habitual felons, and you get 13,913 who
have been sent to prison for non-violent crimes. That doesn't even
include property crimes and other non-violent offenses such as forgery
and fraud. Just recently, we learned of concerns that legislators had
about increasing penalties for people who commit crimes as a result of
gang-related activity. Such proposals would require the state to build
space to house an estimated 385 more inmates at a cost of $26.2
million. It would cost between $5 million and $11.9 million a year to
house those inmates. If instead, we'd change our sentencing code so
that fewer non-violent offenders weren't put in prison, we wouldn't
even need to build more prisons to house them.

We're all for making those who violate our freedoms and commit
offenses against us pay for our crimes. That's especially true of
those who commit violent crimes.

North Carolina can set a new trend by taking the lead in changing
prison sentencing policy so that people who don't pose a threat to
society aren't incarcerated. That would leave room in prison for those
who do.