NOW MAY BE THE TIME TO REVIEW SYSTEM OF CRIMINAL SENTENCING

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.

One might not be surprised that prisons might get shortchanged when
money gets tight. However, 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 sentence time to a lot of crimes,
specifically 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 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.

Hit these criminals in the wallet, make them work for their
restitution. We're not saying they should escape punishment, rather we
should make sure taxpayers don't have to support them for their wrongdoing.

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 plenty of room in prison
for those who do.