PRISON NUMBERS ON RISE AGAIN

A national survey of state prison populations found that Alabama's dropped
nearly 7 percent last year, although the state still had the sixth highest
incarceration rate in the nation. That trend, however, is not continuing
and in fact cannot continue without reforms in sentencing.

The report from the U.S. Justice Department showed Alabama with 26,521
inmates in its prisons on June 30 of last year. That was down significantly
from the population a year earlier, when there were 28,400 inmates.

But the encouraging figures didn't last long. By last week, the prison
population was up to 27,487, according to Department of Corrections
spokesman Brian Corbett.

The drop was due to the establishment of a second parole board to consider
the cases of nonviolent offenders, many of whom were released. That move
made a lot of sense, given that incarceration is hardly the most desirable
way to deal with such offenders, who do not pose a physical threat to the
safety of the public.

The second board did its job well in terms of helping curb overcrowding --
for a time. Once it had reviewed all the cases that came under its purview,
there was nothing left for it to do.

The parole board, of course, had no authority to address the flow of
inmates that continued to come into the prison system and that continues to
fill the prisons today. As long as Alabama keeps sentencing lots of people
to traditional incarceration who really don't need to be there, the
overcrowding is assured of continuing.

The only realistic option for ending overcrowding in a system now bulging
at 202 percent of designed capacity is sentencing reform that sends fewer
people to prison. Theoretically, Alabama could build more prisons to house
the growing number of inmates, but that's not going to happen. The state
can barely pay for what it has now.

There is no easy -- or cheap -- way out of this situation, but the
development of alternative sentences and alternative programs for those
sentenced under them is by far the best approach to take. Nothing else that
can plausibly be expected to occur offers the same potential for addressing
the chronic problems.