SAVE PRISONS FOR THOSE WHO BELONG THERE; SAVE MONEY

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

Texas taxpayers shelled out about $2.2 billion in 2003 to hire 72,220 state
and local corrections employees to watch over 213,800 inmates. That's about
$10,289 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 Texas, about 106,900 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 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
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, Texans also spent $301 million, or about $574 per year to
supervise each of 524,200 non-incarcerated convicts. That means for every
non-violent inmate shifted from inside prison to non-prison punishment,
taxpayers could save upward of $9,706 per year. If all 106,900 non-violent
inmates were released to alternative punishments, the state could
potentially save $1 billion 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, 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."