PRISON NEWS WARRANTS A BETTER TIME SLOT

Gov. Quinn did the right thing the wrong way Friday, announcing he
would set free 1,000 "nonviolent" prison inmates over the next few
months to save money.

Quinn was right to take the first long-overdue step in Illinois to
reduce the state's massive prison population. Thousands of inmates are
no more than drug addicts who could be better rehabilitated in their
communities, saving the state millions of dollars.

But he was wrong to slip his announcement into the bottom of a press
release late on a Friday afternoon, as the sun was setting and
reporters were calling it a day -- that twilight time in the weekly
news cycle when politicians try to bury their worst potential headlines.

On the contrary, Quinn's decision to begin releasing some nonviolent
offenders is nothing he needs to soft-peddle, however unpopular it may
prove with some voters -- and however much he will be hammered for it
by others running for governor.

In that respect, it is also unfortunate that Quinn presented his
decision as above all a money-saving measure, when in fact the
greatest benefits will be to promote the rehabilitation of nonviolent
offenders and lighten the load of an overburdened prison system.

As Quinn does say in that whisper of a press release, reducing the
number of inmates serving short sentences -- often just months -- is
essential to "modernizing and improving" the state's prison system
without compromising public safety. The released inmates will be
fitted with electronic monitoring devices.

As we have written before, Illinois simply sends too many people to
prison for too long. It is costing the taxpayers a fortune and
throwing away lives.

The State of Illinois spends more than $1.5 billion a year to
incarcerate about 45,000 adult men and women and 1,400 juveniles. That
financial burden exploded from a mere $65 million three decades ago
and requires 5 cents of every dollar of state general revenue funds.

From 1990 to 2004, the state's spending on corrections increased four
times faster than spending on higher education.

And who are these inmates?

Plenty of them are the barbarians for whom there is no place in
civilized society. They are killers and rapists, armed robbers and
child molesters. They are the people for whom prisons were intended --
and Quinn's reforms keep them securely behind bars.

But tens of thousands of other inmates are nonviolent offenders, many
convicted of drug and property crimes. They rotate in and out of our
prisons at a dizzying pace, driving up costs and making serious talk
of rehabilitation a joke. They simply are not around long enough to be
treated. Forty-seven percent of offenders released from custody each
year have served six months or less.

Quinn estimates that releasing 1,000 of these prisoners will save the
state about $5 million a year. That savings, however, will be offset
by $2 million in additional expenditures for community-based programs,
such as drug treatment, for the released inmates.

The long-term goal -- and the far bigger potential source of savings
for the Illinois taxpayer -- is to reduce the rate at which former
inmates run afoul of the law again and return to prison.

Equally important, reducing the state's inmate population could free
up more time and money for treatment programs for those offenders who
remain incarcerated. Prison watchdog groups, such as the John Howard
Association, have long called for more and better rehabilitation
programs in our prisons -- for the inmates' sake and for our own.

Most inmates, even many of the worst offenders, are set free sooner or
later. They return to our streets one way or another, prepared to stay
clean this time or set to fail again.

They sit next to us on the bus. They walk past us on dark streets.
They move in next door.

If we don't turn them around when they're locked up, we'll be looking
over our shoulder when they're set free.