RISING PRISON PROBLEMS BEGIN TO TRICKLE INTO SOCIETY

95% of inmates are freed -- trained in violence, short on rehabilitation.

It's difficult for most people to muster any sympathy for the 2.2
million people serving time in the nation's overcrowded prisons and
jails, half of them for violent crimes.

Sexual assaults, gang violence, lack of rehabilitation and shoddy
medical care are shrugged off as givens, or even deserved. Comedians
joke about what'll happen to former Enron CEO Ken Lay once he's
behind bars. Most people feel that what goes on in prisons doesn't affect them.

That attitude couldn't be more wrong.

What happens in prisons returns to the community with a vengeance.
Over the course of a year, 13.5 million people spend time in jails or
prisons, and 95% of them are eventually released back into society.
Many return as more hardened felons eager to commit new crimes and
responsible for spreading infectious diseases -- such as HIV,
hepatitis and tuberculosis -- that went untreated while they were incarcerated.

A report released Thursday by the independent blue ribbon Commission
on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, established by the
non-profit Vera Institute of Justice in New York, is a scathing
indictment of the nation's correctional system. Congress and states
passed get-tough-on-crime laws without providing funding and
resources to allow prisons to cope with new inmates, the report says.
As a result, too many prisons and jails are unsafe, unhealthy or
inhumane, and their failures spill over into the community.

Among the commission's findings:

Violence. Inmates and corrections officers alike tell of a
near-constant fear of being assaulted, but many prisons don't even
collect or report data about assaults. When they do, the data are
unreliable. Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota each reported to
the U.S. Justice Department zero assaults among prisoners statewide
in 2000. No one believes that's true. Other states have also reported
numbers so low as to be laughable.

Rehabilitation. While the prison population has doubled since 1990,
funding for education and vocational training hasn't kept pace.
Education programs reduce rule-breaking and could cut recidivism
rates by nearly half, the report says.

Medical care. More than 1.5 million inmates are released each year
carrying life-threatening contagious diseases. Some prisons with as
many as 5,000 inmates have only two or three doctors, the commission
found. Prisons must do more to test and treat infectious diseases,
and they should partner with medical personnel in the community to
deliver care. They should be required to report health information to
the federal government, the report says.

Accountability. What goes on within the insular culture of prisons
too often escapes scrutiny by public officials. Greater external
monitoring is needed. Every state should create an independent agency
to monitor prisons and jails, the commission says.

None of this means coddling criminals. But failing to deal with
prisoners effectively only ensures more problems for society when
they are released.