RATE OF INCARCERATION IN SOUTHERN STATES LEADS THE NATION

RALEIGH--Principal Sheila Young says the family portrait drawn by one of
her brightest third-graders was disturbing: There, next to the smiling
faces of the girl and her eight siblings was a frowning woman, their
mother, with vertical bars over her face.

"I ran to get the social worker because it's such an exaggerated frown,"
said Young, whose Craig Elementary School is in one of the poorest
neighborhoods in New Orleans.

Young learned the girl's crack-addicted mother was serving a year for a
parole violation. And when she asked the girl's classmates how many of them
had a family member or neighbor in prison, more than half the hands shot up.

When it comes to locking people up, Louisiana leads the South. And the
South leads the nation.

Since 1980, the country's prison population has quadrupled to 2.1 million,
with the South accounting for 45 percent of that increase, according to a
report released Friday by the grass-roots group Critical Resistance South.

Citizen activists from around the region are meeting in New Orleans this
weekend to brainstorm about how to change the situation. At a time when
nearly every state is facing crushing deficits, Rose Braz believes prison
beds are a good place to start cutting.

"I do think this is a unique opportunity for states to re-examine their
spending priorities," said Braz, national director for Critical Resistance.
"We have a limited amount of money that is getting smaller by the minute.
Do we want to invest in prisons, prisons and more prisons?"

Louisiana's incarceration rate is 800 per 100,000 residents. The rate for
the South is 526 per 100,000 -- higher than that of 63 percent of countries
in the world, according to the report generated for the group by the
Justice Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. The West is a distant second
at 408 per 100,000.

Thirteen of the 20 states with the highest incarceration rates are in the
South. And while the rate of incarceration for women has grown nationally,
the South outpaced the nation by 17 percent.

Why are the region's numbers so high?

Some argue that Southern states have spent less money for the kinds of
social programs that tend to keep people out of prison.

"The South historically has had either less money available or less
political interest in making those investments," said Marc Mauer, assistant
director of The Sentencing Project. "And so, by default, prison is an
option that becomes more widely used because of that."

A recent national survey conducted by Florida State University researchers
found that Southerners were more politically conservative, racially
prejudiced and more punitive than people in other regions.

"What we find ... is the more people define crime as a black issue, the
more punitive they're willing to be," said criminologist and study
co-author Ted Chiricos.

Prison populations soared through the past two decades as states got tough
on crime, with so-called "three strikes" and "truth in sentencing" measures
that guaranteed repeat offenders long stays. But as crime rates have
fallen, many states in the South and elsewhere have attempted to cut their
prison populations.

In the past two years, Louisiana and Mississippi -- which has the
second-highest lockup rate -- have backed away from mandatory minimum
sentences for certain offenders. Georgia, which ranks sixth in its lockup
rate, is considering moving toward sentencing guidelines, which seek to
divert nonviolent offenders into community-based programs.

Partly as a result of these measures, the South's incarceration rate has
grown slower than the other regions' over the past 20 years -- 180 percent.
The West saw the highest growth, 289 percent, according to the JPI report.

Mississippi's new corrections commissioner, Christopher Epps, said his
prison population grew by just 912 last year, instead of the 1,500 it had
been averaging in the 1990s. He gives some of the credit to a new law that
set parole eligibility dates for 7,000 inmates.

"I have 20,000 locked up and 21,000 in the community," Epps said. "It's
like running a race."

Faced with a looming $400 million shortfall, Kentucky recently granted
early release to about 900 inmates.

South Carolina's corrections department is considering releasing up to
4,000 inmates, and Arkansas' governor wants to put more drug violators in
treatment programs. Nearly half of Louisiana's 36,000 prisoners have
applied for an early out under a new law that was supposed to save $3
million a year; only a handful have been released so far.

"I would argue that high incarceration rates are not terribly
cost-effective," Mauer said. "But many of those arguments have not been
persuasive in most of those states until the budget crunch hit."

Florida is one state that still isn't persuaded.

Gov. Jeb Bush has forged ahead with 25-year-to-life mandatory terms for sex
criminals and guaranteed 10-year sentences for people carrying guns during
the commission of a crime.

He is also seeking $75 million for prison construction projects, even
though the system currently has empty beds.