PRISON HEAD COUNT SURGES

Get Tough Laws Pushed Up Number of Inmates

TAMPA - The prison population in Florida has shot up about 2 1/2 times as
fast as the general population in the past decade, according to new U.S.
census figures.

The result is a lower overall crime rate off by as much as one-third since
the 1990s. But experts say there's a time bomb buried in the numbers, and
it could explode when the convicts in prison are freed.

The new census figures show that 60.7 percent more people a total of 71,319
were behind bars in Florida's 106 prisons last year than in 1990, when
44,381 were in jail. In the same period, Florida's general population
increased by 24 percent, from about 13 million to 16 million.

The reasons for the surge in the prison population are clear enough,
experts say.

The Florida Legislature, fed up with rising crime rates, passed get- tough
laws in the 1990s barring early releases and requiring that most inmates
serve at least 85 percent of their sentences.

The crackdown was aimed in particular at those convicted of drug- related
offenses. The new laws gave them longer terms and made them mandatory.

Because of the new laws, inmates given prison terms in Florida last year
could count on serving at least 80 percent of their sentences on the
average vs. 34 percent in 1992.

"It's clear that we're beginning to see the results from the good works of
the Legislature equipping law enforcement with the resources they need to
fight crime," said Al Dennis, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement.

But the numbers are misleading, experts say, and obscure a crisis in the
making that will have to be dealt with.

The Root Of Prison Problems

The idea of rehabilitating prisoners, once a cornerstone in corrections
circles, is giving way to a new philosophy, experts say. The focus now is
to get criminals off the streets and to warehouse them. Concern is fading
about what will happen when these people re-enter society.

Put another way, said Laura Bedard, director of undergraduate studies for
the School of Criminology at Florida State University, Florida increasingly
is treating a symptom of its lawlessness rather than the cause.

"We often implement laws as reactions or desperation," Bedard said. "We
need to look at the root instead of handling the symptoms."

Roger Lane, a professor who teaches the history of crime and violence at
Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia, agrees.

"A cycle has been started," Lane said. "A person can go in on a drug
charge, have no treatment, keep his habit up in prison, wants his fix when
he gets out, and ends up back in for the same thing that got him in in the
first place."

And eventually the cycle will begin to reproduce itself in an ever-
widening circle, said R. Dean Wright, professor of sociology at Drake
University in Des Moines, Iowa.

"Who do [inmates] have as friends?" Wright said. "Employers don't want to
hire them. ... They are not welcomed back into the open community. They
have become the new untouchables of American society."

Making Educated Decisions

Education would be a big help, said Bedard.

"Inmates end up going back [to prison] because they don't know what their
options are. We need to get them to change their thinking, to stop
justifying their behavior."

Jenni Gainsborough, senior policy analyst for The Sentencing Project, a
nonprofit, nonpartisan research and advocacy group, echoed Bedard's sentiment.

"The most cost-efficient way to deal with the rising population is to give
them an education," Gainsborough said. "Most people who enter the system
haven't completed high school and barely know how to read and write."

But state prisons spend relatively little on educating inmates on average,
$1.31 per inmate per day.

Meanwhile, the daily cost of housing an inmate in Florida currently is
$49.39 a day, up from $40.27 in 1990.

Enlightened alternatives to doing hard time in prison would also help in
the long run, Wright said.

House arrest, halfway houses, and occupational and educational release
treatment for alcohol and drug abuse work well for nonviolent offenders,
Wright said.

"People who are in more open alternatives have a better rate of survival
than those who go straight to prison," he said.

And follow-up support once released inmates complete parole would help,
too, Wright said.

"Once a person is done with parole, we drop them. The system doesn't follow
people well, and they end up losing them. ... It's difficult for them to
find a job, so they go back to crime."

Meanwhile, the time bomb is still ticking, experts say.

"We've created dead-end institutions," Wright said, where inmates are given
"a safe place to live as long as they're not outside harming the public."

Sooner or later, their terms will end, Wright and others said, and we'll
return to where we began.