CUTS COULD SHUT PRISONS

Nearly 1,200 Jobs At Stake

Georgia Corrections Department officials agreed Thursday to recommend
budget cuts that would close 15 facilities --- possibly including some
prisons --- and eliminate almost 1,200 jobs.

The $69 million in proposed cuts to the department's budget for the year
that begins in July 2004 also would trim some religious and educational
programs for inmates.

Cuts would not affect the "core" duties of the department, said Alan Adams,
acting assistant commissioner of corrections.

"Due to the degree to which we're being required to make budget cuts,
nonpriority programs that do not directly relate to safety and security
will be cut," he said in an interview. Adams said that if the cuts were
enacted, it would move the Corrections Department from trying to
rehabilitate inmates to simply housing them.

The cuts approved by Corrections' governing board come in response to Gov.
Sonny Perdue's call for all state departments to reduce spending in the
face of falling revenues. The spending plans must be approved by the
governor's office and the Legislature.

"This is not a done deal," Perdue said of the Corrections Department's
action. "These are just departments having candid conversations about what
may happen, what could happen."

"The resources in our state are limited," the governor said. "We're having
conversations among department heads regarding proposals."

Perdue directed state agencies in August to reduce their budgets for the
current fiscal year by 2.5 percent and their spending plans for the
following year by an additional 5 percent. The departments are to submit
their plans to the governor's office by Monday.

In the past two weeks, some agencies have announced major cuts. The
Department of Human Resources is proposing to close two hospitals for the
mentally ill and cut 924 jobs. The Department of Natural Resources is
considering closing some state parks and swimming pools and laying off
about 69 employees.

Georgia has the nation's sixth-largest prison population. The Corrections
Department's inmate population, now at 47,000, has doubled since 1992.

Adams noted that the agency's $876 million budget request for the upcoming
fiscal year is equal to the department's budget in 1999, when it housed
11,000 fewer inmates.

The recommendations the Corrections board approved would:

Close 15 of the department's 80 prisons, detention centers, diversion
centers and boot camps statewide, resulting in a loss of 2,750 beds and 784
jobs and a savings of $34 million. The department will not disclose which
facilities would close until the governor gives his approval, Adams said.
Announcing closings now would demoralize employees and possibly cause them
to seek other employment, he said.

Inmates at facilities that close would be moved to others, Adams said. Due
to a prison-building boom in the 1990s, the state has enough space, he said.

Reduce by 50 percent the counseling programs at prisons, saving $10.6
million and cutting 259 jobs.

Eliminate all prison chaplains --- three full-time and 49 part-time --- to
save $1.3 million. Adams said volunteer clergy and lay people could assist
in worship services and spiritual counseling.

Cut by 50 percent the number of part-time teachers at prisons and eliminate
them at other Corrections facilities, saving about $3 million. The teachers
provide instruction for general equivalency diplomas and literacy courses.

For the current fiscal year, which started July 1, all Corrections
employees not involved in securing inmates would be required to take one
day off without pay every other month, saving $4 million.

Inmate advocates said many of the programs on the chopping block help
prisoners prepare for transition back into society.

"We can't assume that just by locking somebody up that that's going to heal
them or change them from the behavior that put them in there in the first
place," said Sara Totonchi of the Southern Center for Human Rights, a
nonprofit legal firm in Atlanta. "There has to be some element of
treatment. Some element of hope."

Andrea Shelton, president of Atlanta-based Heartbound Ministries, which
helps churches "adopt" prisons, said eliminating chaplains would be
short-sighted. "Without chaplains, we're just going to reap what we sow,"
Shelton said. "We're going to see an idle, angry, frustrated inmate
population."

State Rep. Alan Powell (D-Hartwell), chairman of a House Budget
subcommittee on criminal justice, said get-tough-on-crime legislation had
proved expensive. Georgia has mandatory 10-year minimum sentences for
certain violent crimes and requires that inmates serve 90 percent of their
sentence for many crimes. "We've locked up lots of people. With that comes
a price," Powell said. "If you want to do all these things, you've got to
pay for it."

Powell said policymakers need to consider alternatives to incarceration for
nonviolent offenders.

Corrections board member Robert Brown expressed concern about the effect
that cutting certain programs would have on inmate behavior. Yet he voted
for the proposals.

"I think it's reality," Brown said. "The revenues are down and the governor
is looking at all the options."

Staff writer Nancy Badertscher contributed to this article.