SHIPPING INMATES NO SOLUTION

As Wisconsin prison chief Michael Sullivan admits, housing inmates out
of state, originally a stopgap measure, is now a permanent feature of
state corrections policy. That development bodes no good.

Sure, as a temporary solution for catching Wisconsin's prison
overflow, the use of out-of-state lockups makes sense. But over the
long haul, the practice hurts efforts to reduce crime and thus prison
congestion.

People who work with convicts say that visits from family members
helps rehabilitation, which in turn would mean less crime. But
relatives can rarely visit if the inmates sit hundreds of miles away.

A second reason to avoid out-of-state placements is that they're
harder to monitor -- which may have figured into the trouble involving
Wisconsin inmates last summer at the prison run by the private
Corrections Corporation of America in Whiteville, Tenn. The trouble
allegedly entailed the beating of a guard by inmates, the subsequent
abuse of inmates and then a coverup of the abuse.

The Wisconsin Legislature must keep in mind that the congestion
problem is almost entirely of its own making. A rising crime rate is
not driving the problem; in fact, crime is not rising. Rather, the
Legislature's penchant for passing tougher and tougher laws is
responsible.

Some toughening may have been in order. But, irresponsibly, lawmakers
dramatically lengthened sentences without adequately dealing with the
predictable jump in prison population.

In other words, lawmakers did the fun part -- stiffening the laws.
They skipped the hard part -- paying for the stiffened laws.

In passing truth-in-sentencing last session, lawmakers were true to
form. Truth-in-sentencing has its virtue in that it clears up public
confusion over how long a convict will spend in prison. But it will
likely lengthen actual sentences. As if to ensure that outcome,
legislators attached to the measure new, big increases in maximum
sentences for felonies.

Wisconsin must get a handle on the congestion problem -- by building
new prisons in state, drastically beefing up rehabilitation efforts,
making more use of alternatives to prisons, taking more steps to steer
troubled youngsters away from a life of crime and restoring sanity to
criminal legislation.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry