FIXING VIRGINIA'S PRISON WOES

WASHINGTON - Sadly, America's first national prison commission in 30
years failed to tackle, head-on, our lock 'em up culture and to find
ways to reduce the number of people behind bars in Virginia and elsewhere.

The commission's recent report is little more than a how-to manual to
help wardens cope with overcrowded prisons that breed violence,
disease and recidivism. What we really need is a road map to
drastically shrink Virginia's prison population and, at the same time,
save state taxpayers a lot of money.

Jailhouse America

In "Confronting Confinement," the Commission on Safety and Abuse in
America's Prisons, the commission admits: "It was beyond the scope of
our inquiry to explore how states and the federal government might
sensibly reduce prisoner populations. Yet all that we studied is
touched by, indeed in the grip of, America's unprecedented reliance on
incarceration. We incarcerate more people at a higher rate than any
country in the world."

The study rightly pins responsibility for our overcrowded prisons on
tough-on-crime laws passed by state and federal legislators. But it
does not look for ways to downsize America's booming prison industry
that adds more than 1,000 new inmates per week, costs more than $60
billion a year and employs about 750,000 workers to watch over 2.2
million inmates - almost double the 1990 prison population.

The commission never asked this question: Why pay room and board to
put someone like Martha Stewart, or a pot smoker, or a car thief
behind bars when modern electronic tracking devices can easily keep
tabs on these non-violent criminals at a fraction of the cost?

Virginia's Prisons and Jails

Virginia taxpayers shelled out about $696 million in 2003 to hire
21,284 state and local corrections employees to watch over 56,000
inmates. That's about $12,430 per year, per inmate.

Nationally, about one-half of all state prisoners have been convicted
of violent crimes, including murder and assault. In the case of
Virginia, the other half - about 28,000 inmates - are non-violent,
many of them convicted of possession or sale of small quantities of
drugs. For such offenders - and for low-level burglars and embezzlers
- - prison can do more harm than good. Many will leave prison more
violent and possessing better criminal skills than when they arrived.
And even those that want to go straight will have a hard time finding
a legitimate job.

A Common Sense Approach

Why not treat these offenders differently? The Council of State
Governments reports that halfway houses and non-residential,
community-based supervision programs, including day reporting centers,
community service and other work assignments, are viable alternatives
to incarceration. These alternatives also allow offenders to build
work and social skills needed to avoid future run-ins with the law.

In 2003, Virginians also spent $272 million, or about $5,850 per year
to supervise each of 46,500 non-incarcerated convicts. That means for
every non-violent inmate shifted from inside prison to non-prison
punishment, taxpayers could save upwards of $6,580 per year. If all
28,000 non-violent inmates were released to alternative punishments,
the state could potentially save $184 million annually.

Five years ago, California started sending drug offenders to treatment
programs instead of prison and, based on a recent UCLA study, the
state has saved about $173 million a year and no longer needs to build
a planned new prison. Total savings: $1.4 billion. Maryland is cutting
its prison population and saving money with a similar program.

Overcrowded, violent and disease-filled prisons and jails are here to
stay as long as the number of inmates sent to prison goes up year
after year. As a society, we are quick to needlessly fill prisons with
non-violent inmates, and too slow to find alternative ways to punish
and rehabilitate them.

We now need a second commission to finish the job, and publish a
step-by-step road map for ending America's "unprecedented reliance on
incarceration."

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT
Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. Examiner