THE PRICE OF PRISONS

For the 5,000 residents of Charleston, Mo., crime does pay. The rural
Bootheel community is celebrating its designation as the new site for
a maximum-security prison that will bring 400 jobs and a $10 million
annual payroll.

Like so many rural communities across the nation, Charleston needed an
economic boost and found it behind bars. Charleston also found stiff
competition for the new prison. More than two dozen Missouri
communities vied for two prisons that eventually went to Charleston
and Licking.

The exponential growth of the prison industry is good news for towns
like Charleston. Criminals get locked up; local people get steady jobs.

But all of us pay dearly for localized prosperity. There are now
25,000 people behind bars in Missouri. It costs Missouri taxpayers
about $12,731 a year to feed, house, clothe and provide medical care
for each inmate. That per person price tag - more than twice the cost
of educating a Missouri public school student - does not include the
cost of building new prisons like the 1,500-inmate lock-up in
Charleston. Since 1990, the Department of Corrections has seen its
budget balloon to $495 million from $191 million. Its inmate
population swelled 67 percent, from 15,106 in 1990 to 25,277 today.

More money spent on incarceration means there is less money available
to spend on schools and social services. While some experts give
partial credit to longer, harsher sentencing and higher prison
populations for a national and regional drop in the crime rate, it has
been achieved at a price. Our relentless pursuit of punishment over
prevention does nothing to break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and
crime that makes it necessary to build more prisons.

Meanwhile, our public schools are desperate for funds, beat the bushes
for teachers and beg for books. Seven of 10 prisoners in America
cannot read, and many of Missouri's prisoners come from St. Louis
city, where 35 percent of residents can read barely or not at all. We
need to spend more of our prison money and manpower on a proven,
powerful form of prevention: education.