ALTERNATIVE SENTENCES TO NONVIOLENT CRIMES COULD SAVE MILLIONS

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 Illinois 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
Illinois' prison population and, at the same time, save state
taxpayers a lot of money.

In "Confronting Confinement," the Commission on Safety and Abuse in
America's Prisons 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, released last month, 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, which 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 nonviolent criminals at a fraction of the cost?

Illinois taxpayers shelled out about $1 billion in 2003 to hire 23,480
state and local corrections employees to watch over 65,000 inmates.
That's about $15,384 per year, per inmate.

Nationally, about one-half of all state prisoners have been convicted
of violent crimes, including murder and assault. The other half -- in
the case of Illinois about 32,500 inmates -- are nonviolent, 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 who want to go straight will have a hard time finding a
legitimate job.

Why not treat these offenders differently? The Council of State
Governments reports that halfway houses and nonresidential,
community-based supervision programs, including day reporting centers,
community service and 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, Illinoisans also spent $218 million, or about $1,210 per
year, to supervise each of 179,500 non-incarcerated convicts. This
means for every nonviolent inmate shifted from inside prison to
non-prison punishment, taxpayers save more than $14,174 per year. If
all 32,500 nonviolent inmates were released to alternative
punishments, the state could potentially save $460 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 nonviolent
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 writes on public policy issues for DKT Liberty Project,
a Washington-based civil liberties organization.