HIGH COST OF CRIME

Crime Does Not Pay. In Fact It Costs Taxpayers Dearly.

While incarcerating the bad guys keeps them off the streets so they
can't do more crime, the cost of housing them is tremendous, and the
bill keeps rising. What's driving much of the crime is the use of
illegal drugs, for users need to steal to pay for their habit.

Now the state's prison population is growing, and new and expanded
prisons are being called for. Ari Zavaras, executive director of the
Department of Corrections, addressed that need to the Legislature's
Capital Development Committee, which prioritizes state construction
needs other than highways.

He listed several Southern Colorado prisons in need of expansion. If
all the construction were to take place, the price tag would total
more than half a billion dollars.

That's a sobering message, but members of Capital Development seemed
to understand the need. How to pay for new prison beds is another matter.

The Legislature may well have to resort to Certificates of
Participation, or COPs. They are financing instruments like bonds but
do not carry the same debt burden on the state that bonds would. Or
lawmakers might decide to have the prisons built privately and then
have the state lease and operate those facilities.

Among the projects outlined by Mr. Zavaras were doubling of the San
Carlos Correctional Facility on the state hospital campus in Pueblo,
and expanding the Trinidad Correctional Facility, the Colorado
Women's Correctional Facility in Canon City, the Arkansas Valley
Correctional Facility in Crowley and the Fort Lyon Correctional Facility.

In a perfect world we would not need prisons. But this isn't a
perfect world, and so sound public policy is to segregate the
lawbreakers from the rest of society.

And that costs us all dearly.