THE PRISON POPULATION IS RISING - POLITICIANS MUST BE VERY PROUD

If I told you that my prescription for making America a bit safer from
crime was to lock up every blessed soul living in Maine and New Hampshire,
you'd think I was nutty.

But official government policy in this country has almost that many people
behind bars this morning, more than 1.7 million. And if you throw in all
the employees who report to prison or jail every day, the guards, cooks,
nurses, and administrators, the total of Americans who spend their day
inside prison walls is more than the combined populations of Maine and New
Hampshire. Now for more news: The prison and jail population will probably
top 2 million in time for 2000. Sure, crime rates are falling, but prison
and jail populations are rising. How so? Longer sentences. Since Ronald
Reagan's tough talk on crime proved politically popular in the mid-'80s,
your typical inmate has had five months tacked on to his time in the jug,
from an average of 20 months to 25 months.

Just ask yourself: Have you ever seen a politician brag that he's for
shorter sentences? Easier time? More parole and probation? Have you
forgotten what George Bush's hatchetmen did to Michael Dukakis over Willie
Horton in the presidential election 10 years ago? No politician has
forgotten that lesson.

So sentences get longer, rhetoric gets harsher, and candidates outdo
themselves in bragging how tough they'll be on miscreants. Remember Bill
Weld riding into office promising to introduce his prisoners to ''the joy
of breaking rocks''? It's still a trend.

And that average sentence gets longer each month, with longer minimums,
three-strikes-and-you're-out, stricter sentencing rules that prevent judges
from weighing a defendant's youth, IQ, mitigating circumstance, or general
stupidity in easing prison stays. We are also cracking down on parole
violators: Nearly one-third of all inmates are back where they are because
they did something really stupid all over again.

You thought our hottest growth industry was something in the computer line?
Try prison construction. All through the '90s, our prison population
expanded by about 64,000 per year. That means every month, we need new
cells for 5,350 men - they are overwhelmingly men. That's a roof, a bed, a
barred door, a toilet, three squares and medical care, plus the custodial
charges, for a net increase of 175 men per day.

You are paying for all this. You are hiring, as taxpayers, on average,
every day of the year, weekends and holidays included, a fresh crew of 175
prisoners, whom you will now have to feed, cloth, medicate, guard, and
entertain, plus another crew to watch over them and make sure they don't
leave their new home before their 25-months-and-growing, on average, is up.
Make sense to you? Do you feel safer because going on 2 million of your
fellow Americans are locked up? In many cases, yes, we know there are
dangerous people who deserve to be locked away. The most violent and
felonious, sure, no problem, keep them tucked away.

But why do we have so many more prisoners per capita than any other
industrial nation, save Russia? That is the only country with more inmates
per head than we have. Our rate of incarcerating 645 out of every 100,000
citizens is six to 10 times higher than the rest of the so-called civilized
world. Sound bites elect politicians, and three-strikes-and-you're-out
sounds satisfactory after the local TV station zips up its audience share
with live shots from the latest gruesome crime scene. But 19 out of 20 of
those prison inmates chilling in noisy, crowded, understaffed,
over-brutalized prisons come out, typically after 25 months of
soul-deadening punishment. And they come back to live in our midst and try
to pick up where they left off. Some go straight.Some have the gumption and
IQ to get jobs, to overcome the stigma of a prison record, to renew family
life, to get on with living. A lot don't. They were drunk or high when they
did what they did to get in trouble in the first place, and most prisoners
have done a lot more wrong than what they got sentenced for.

Drink and drugs gave a lot of them the false courage they needed to try
something really crooked. And if they're a little light in the IQ
department, as many prisoners are, if they had broken families, lousy
schooling, and a predilection for dope, booze, or violent behavior, then
over they go, and in they go. But every other industrial nation, save one,
has devised smoother, calmer, more efficient, and less costly ways of
dealing with malefactors.

Shorter, swifter sentences, more counseling and oversight on the street,
intensive job-skill training and maximization of religious and
psychological help, teaching reading and writing and basic social skills,
all these would help. Prison too often makes hard and brutal men harder and
more brutal. I write a similar column every summer when the numbers come
out, usually picking two states whose population mirrors that in prison.
Next year, I'm afraid, I may have to toss in Rhode Island.