FORUM'S MAIN CONCERN IS GROWING PRISON RANKS

Better To Invest Money In Prevention, Critics Say

MIDDLETON -- Just a few years ago, Madison East High School student
Adam Tippery was one of ''them'' a crack user, a gang member, a criminal.

But thanks to some hard realities faced during seven months in
juvenile prison, the support of his parents and church and a renewed
faith in God, Adam Tippery became one of ''us'' again. He returned to
high school and earned all-city, all-conference and all-area honors in
football.

These days, Tippery attends a small Minnesota college, where he plays
football. Adam even talks of becoming a minister, his father, Rod
Tippery, notes with pride.

On Tuesday, Rod Tippery was among 300 people who met at the Marriott
Madison West to debate and mainly criticize Wisconsin's booming prison
population. Like many at the ''Restoring the Balance'' conference,
Tippery called on Wisconsin to spend more money helping keep people
out of trouble and less on locking them up.

''We've got to stop investing on the wrong end of the scale. We need
to invest in those (programs), not 'supermaxes,' '' Tippery said,
referring to the 500-bed supermaximum-security prison being completed
near Boscobel.

The conference was organized by the grassroots Task Force on Money,
Education and Prisons. It drew a wide gathering ranging from Madison
Police Chief Richard Williams to Mark Larsen, a convicted felon who
served 14 years for a violent robbery at a Rocky Rococo's restaurant.

Those attending did not reject the need for prisons. All said
incarceration is necessary for many offenders.

What they objected to was the number of people behind bars in
Wisconsin which has grown from 7,117 to 18,163 in just eight years.
They also criticized the vast racial disparity in Wisconsin prisons,
where 48 percent of inmates are African-American compared to 5 percent
of the nation's population. And they noted that the roughly one-third
of Wisconsin's male inmates behind bars for non-violent offenses might
be better served by less-costly and more-humane community programs.

The keynote speaker was Benjamin Hooks, who was a public defender and
judge in Tennessee before heading the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People for 17 years. Hooks retired from that
post in 1992.

''There is a crisis in the life of Wisconsin,'' Hooks thundered. ''In
these throwaway days, when we throw away anything, we ought not to
throw away our children.''

Hooks cited well-known national statistics that show 33 percent of
young African-American men are in jail or prison, or on probation or
parole.

Discrimination and poverty play a role in that disparity, he said, as
does the disintegration of the family and a lack of old-fashioned
values such as discipline.

Jan Cummings, who heads Milwaukee-area probation and parole programs
for the state Department of Corrections, agreed.

''We need to get back to basics: back to families, back to church,
back to school, back to public health, back to communities,'' Cummings
said.

Beth Carter, national coordinator of the Campaign for an Effective
Crime Policy, warned that a growing private prison industry is
lobbying hard for more incarceration because it's profitable.

Across the country, 90,000 people including some Wisconsin inmates are
held in private prisons, an increase of 27,000 in just one year,
Carter said. She called private prisons ''a serious threat to fair and
effective crime policies.''

Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project in
Washington, D.C., said minorities and the poor are hit especially hard
by get-tough-on-crime strategies such as the national war on drugs.

Those with money can afford drug treatment. Those without must take
what society offers, which these days is a prison cell, he said.

And you can never lock up enough prisoners to seriously curb crime,
Mauer said, noting that the crime rate has fluctuated over the past
few decades while incarceration has steadily climbed.

''We now have six times as many people in our prisoners as we did 25
years ago,'' Mauer said. ''It's truly unprecedented.''

Mauer said the United States locks up 600 out of every 100,000 people.
That's eight times higher than similarly industrialized countries such
as Germany, he said.

''I think it's a real cop-out to say we can't do anything about it,''
Mauer said. ''If we had decided 10 years ago not to just build more
prisons and instead have investments in our young people, we wouldn't
have the problems we have now.''