NON-VIOLENT OFFENDERS SHOULD NOT LIVE IN PRISON ON TAX-PAYERS' DIME

Sadly, America's first national prison commission in 30 years failed
to tackle, head on, our lock 'em culture and to find ways to reduce
the number of people behind bars in Oregon and elsewhere. The
commission's recent report is little more than a how to manual to help
wardens cope with the overcrowded prisons that breed violence, disease
and recidivism.

What we really need is a road map yo drastically shrink Oregon's
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 people at a higher 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 decrease 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, behind bars when modern electronic
tracking devices can easily keep tabs on these non-violent criminals
at a fraction of the cost?

Oregon taxpayers shelled out about $360 million in 2003 to hire 8,693
state and local corrective employees to watch over 18,600 inmates.
That's about $19,350 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 Oregon about 9,300 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 then when they arrived. And even
those that want to go straight will have a hard time finding a
legitimate job.

Why not treat those 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, according to my research, Oregonians also spend $87 million,
or about $1,250 per year to supervise each of the 64,500
nonincarcerated convicts. This means that for every non-violent inmate
shifted from inside prison to nonprison punishment, taxpayers could
save upwards of $18,000 per year. If all 9,300 non-violent inmates
were released to alternative punishments, the state could potentially
save $167 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
their prison population and saving money with a similar program.

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.

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D, writes on public policy issues for the DKT
Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization