COSTLY 'SLAMMERS'

North Carolina Needs More Punishment Options To Cut Demand For Prison
Space, And Sentences Also May Need Revisiting

North Carolinians have a right to look askance at -- and legislators ought
to be asking hard questions about -- the state's ongoing problems with
prison overcrowding while in the midst of what amounts to a permanent
prison construction boom. The state Senate Finance Committee recently
approved building as many as three additional 1,000-bed prisons through a
lease-purchase contract with a private company. That's on top of three new
prisons set to open this year. Correction officials say that without the
second round of construction, North Carolina is projected to have 6,300
more inmates -- up to 41,068 -- than beds by 2010.

The space shortage is forecast despite a prison building push in the 1990s,
driven by stiffer sentencing laws that the General Assembly enacted to
address increases in crime rates here and nationally. During those same
years, North Carolina experienced a big jump in its general (non-inmate)
population -- but clearly not enough to account for the 67 percent increase
in the number of inmates in state prisons.

If the harsher sentencing guidelines indeed are funneling more people to
prison, for longer periods of time, than is reasonable or necessary, then
the legislature needs to attack that problem. Some lawmakers and advocates
already suspect that's why the state can't keep up with overcrowding --
which helps raise the profile of pending bills that would revise downward
some of the stiffer sentences for less violent crimes.

North Carolinians of course need to be protected from hardened and vicious
criminals. But they (and their pocketbooks) shouldn't be victimized by
policies that rely too heavily on costly prison cells.

Meanwhile, few question the fact that deep cuts to alternative punishment
programs have seriously limited judges' ability to divert from prison
people convicted of less serious crimes. Last year alone, the state
stripped $1.6 million from substance abuse programs for inmates, and the
same amount from a program that offers job training and high school
equivalency classes to probationers. Alternatives funded through other
departments and nonprofit groups were cut, too.

Those programs just cost less than prison. Especially with younger
offenders, they also help rescue lives. Incarceration must remain a
dependable option to protect the public from violent criminals. But
lawmakers would do well to aim more money in the direction of other, less
costly means of punishment so they are available in those instances when
they would adequately do the job.