BUILDING A PRISON EMPIRE

Our elected officials have unhinged criminal justice and turned it
into a massive poverty program that breeds criminality. Prisons alone
have consistently consumed a steady eight to 10 percent of an upward-
spiraling state budget for decades. The only visible return is a
relative political stability for those in power.

Florida is investing $2.25 billion in prisons this year, and the
prison's only job is to provide a secure environment with room and
board for about 85,000 men, women and children. The state's version of
doing "hard time" is so appealing that about 45 percent of inmates
have been returning to prison. In fact, there will be more inmates
with previous time in state prison this year than were in prison 20
years ago.

You could say that Florida state prisons are nothing more than a rest
period where inmates often get much required medical attention while
honing skills and broadening contacts in preparation for their next
round of criminality. By the way, medical attention accounted for over
20 percent of the inmate cost per day for the FY 2004-05.

It appears our elected officials get a better return on their
investment of our tax dollars than we taxpayers. Doing "hard time" is
nothing more than an excuse for a rural poverty program in the form of
a prison industrial complex and an urban poverty program for the
criminal justice community. The big payback is the electoral gold of
campaign funds and votes.

There are two lynch pins that can reduce the size of our state prison
population in half. The first is to address the war on drugs as a
medical problem, much as we do with alcohol. And the second is by
measuring drops in the recidivism rates.

Every argument used to justify the war on drugs was used to justify
prohibition. We are suffering identical consequences in the war of
drugs as we did prior to the repeal of prohibition.

The saddest consequence is that we are, and have been, sending more
men, women and children to prison for drug law violations than we have
for violent crimes over the last five years. Violent crimes include
murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

The national closure rate for violent crimes in the same period was
less than 50 percent. That means no one is captured, convicted and
incarcerated for over half of the violent crimes committed.

It seems we could better protect Floridians by focusing more on
violent crime. However, civil forfeitures associated with violent
crimes pale in comparison to drug crimes, which probably accounts for
the emphasis on drug crimes by the criminal justice community.

Our politicians argue that crime statistics have decreased over the
last 14 years. What they are not telling you is that Florida has
consistently been above the national averages in violent crimes since
1960.

Studies show that the simple earning of a GED functionally reduces
recidivism. Can elected officials justify why they cut the Department
of Corrections' capability to provide education to inmates by 50 percent?

The criminal justice codes can be modified so that every time a person
is convicted of a felony, they must graduate at the next higher level
of schooling. Coupled with this is the requirement to obtain a
vocational degree with its corresponding license or
certification.

This would not be in lieu of a sentence, but in conjunction with it.
It would mean that both sentence and educational performance criteria
must be meet prior to release.

The DOC does not have the skill to implement such a broad educational
mandate. Our state secondary school systems have already failed these
people once, and there is no reason to believe they have the desire or
ability to redress those failures.

That leaves the community college system. This is a system that has
decades of experience in remedial education for thousands of students
from a dysfunctional state school system. They also have the skills
and experience of teaching vocational programs.

The question of who should pay is simple enough. The state failed in
its responsibilities for a secondary education, and so it pays. The
vocational programs can be paid by the inmate in the form of a student
loan.

There are definite pluses to such a program. Research by both Florida
Tax Watch and the DOC shows that inmates participating in educational
and vocational programs have higher performance levels, lower
disciplinary rates, lower recidivism rates, and are more likely to
stay off of public dole. Further, these studies also show there is up
to a $3.20 return on each dollar invested within two years.

The single biggest minus is that politicians lose the political gold
from the criminal justice community and the prison industrial complex.
In the end, this is why such a concept will never become a reality.

Kinloch C. Walpole is director of the Gateless Zen Center, a
Gainesville-based group that works with prison inmates.

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