THE HIGH PRICE OF PRISONS

EVEN if legislators lack the will to confront Kentucky's budget crisis head
on, at least one good thing appears likely to come of it: Frankfort may
finally break free of its prison madness.

Kentucky's spending on its criminal justice system grew by 74 percent
between 1996 and 2002. Yet it has already overstuffed its overbuilt prison
system with more than 11,000 prisoners, each costing taxpayers an average
of about $18,000 a year to maintain.

Gov. Paul Patton warned last week that the state can't afford to continue
this trend because of the huge budget deficits it faces -- $509 million
over the next two years. He hinted ominously that the state might even have
to start releasing some felons early to save money. Remarkably, though,
some of his staunchest legislative foes are ready to go along.

The response of Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, for instance, sounded
more like a Kennedy liberal than a Kentucky conservative. "I am sure that
there are people incarcerated that could be managed in a community setting
more efficiently," he said. "It's very expensive to warehouse someone who's
not a threat to the community."

He's right. It is expensive, in monetary, social and familial costs, to
warehouse people needlessly just so politicians can claim to have been
tough on crime.

The alternative is to make sure that there are other viable options, in
which criminals who pose little danger can, in Sen. Kelly's words, be
managed in a community setting more efficiently.

This will still mean spending money -- on a stronger probation and parole
system, on more half-way houses and better drug-treatment programs, on
partnerships with non-profit groups willing to provide the support,
training and structure necessary for turning lives around.

But that kind of spending will, in the end, cost less and bring greater
returns than Kentucky's recent binge of building and operating ever more
warehouses.

Budget crisis or not, it's time for a change of course, and taxpayers
should be glad that leaders of both parties recognize it.