MOVE CAUTIOUSLY ON NC PRISON OVERCROWDING

With a 22% growth rate within a decade, there isn't much room.

Now that Gov. Bev Perdue has released her first budget proposal,
analysts are busy picking it apart.

That's normal practice even in good economic times, and with a series
of budget cuts in this year's proposal, critical scrutiny has begun in earnest.

One of Perdue's key budget moves was to save money and eliminate
state jobs by closing seven inefficient prison units, saving $25
million over two years. That's a rational choice, given that the
legislature's Government Performance Audit Committee recommended
closing such costly units back in the 1990s. It's about time.

But Perdue's plan to house the 1,031 inmates in those units by
transferring them to more efficient facilities creates another
problem that could wind up costing the state a lot of money.

The governor said Tuesday the plan was to house most of those inmates
by "double-celling" them at newer prisons built to accommodate more
inmates in a pinch.

It may also mean putting beds in prison dayrooms to handle the
additional inmates.

But it's important to recognize that this is not a good long-term
solution. Why? Because the state's prison population of 40,644
inmates is already near capacity, and the state expects the prison
population to grow by an additional 9,000 inmates in less than a decade.

The state expects 2,300 new inmates in the next 15 months alone, The
News & Observer of Raleigh reports. While the public probably isn't
overly concerned about prison crowding during a prolonged economic
recession, it's important to remember what happened the last time
North Carolina handled its prison problems by packing more inmates
into existing space: It got sued for not providing a minimal amount
of living space, and led to a costly prison replacement program
during the Martin administration. The state wisely created a
Sentencing Policy and Advisory Commission to make projections about
the need for space, and the legislature appropriated many hundreds of
millions to build new units. So it seems highly likely that a new
round of prison overcrowding could lead to additional costly
litigation. If Perdue's plan is only a stopgap measure to get us
through the current budget crisis until more space can be built, the
costliest impact may be avoided.

But the shifting of inmates at a time of declining state revenues
points to alternatives.

One of them is to alleviate crowding by making better use of
punishment alternatives, including shorter sentences for non-violent
criminals, more widespread use of drug courts and other alternatives
to incarceration so the state has enough room to keep violent
offenders behind bars. Perdue may not be ready to embrace
alternatives to prison, but when the tab starts rolling in for new
prisons to accommodate offenders the state expects by 2018, she may
be more willing to consider another way to dispense justice.