SAVE MONEY, MAKE SC SAFER WITH ALTERNATIVE SENTENCES

WE LOCK UP more of our population than all but eight states - not
because we have more criminals, but because we insist on incarcerating
first-time non-violent offenders. Half of prison inmates have never
committed a violent crime, never committed any crime before, and yet
we spend $15,000 a year to feed, house, clothe and provide medical
care for each one of them.

And what do we get for that? Not a safer society. Putting people in
prison makes it harder for them to find jobs when they get out,
increasing the chance they will return to crime. And with
rehabilitation programs on life support because of budget cuts, those
non-violent offenders spend their days behind bars learning how to be
violent offenders.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Attorney General Henry McMaster wants to divert non-violent offenders
to a new "middle court," where a judge would order them to undergo
treatment and training and get a job, and watch them like a hawk. His
plan is based on the drug courts that are still in their infancy in
our state.

Those courts, open only to non-violent drug offenders, have been
remarkably successful at turning lives around, and we need to expand
them; similar courts open to a larger population of non-violent
offenders could do the same. Even starting with just 800 prisoners as
Mr. McMaster proposes, we would save $10 million in the first year
alone.

We could save more by speeding the release of some of those
non-violent offenders who never should have been sent to prison to
start with. Last year, faced with more cuts, Corrections Director Jon
Ozmint drafted a plan to let him release prisoners a few months early.
Applied to all 3,400 inmates nearing release in any given year, it
would allow the agency to shutter three to five prisons and eliminate
700 guards. (Lawmakers balked.) Even limiting the plan to non-violent
offenders, as he and we would prefer, would save millions.

Even without new programs, the Legislature could make alternative
sentences the norm for non-violent offenders. And it should. Our goal
shouldn't be to lock people away. It should be to protect society and
punish people for their crimes. We can do that just as well - often
better - with shock incarceration, heavier fines, more intensive
probation, electronic monitoring, real community service and other
alternatives.

Politicians fear the public uproar when someone who doesn't go to
prison or is let out early commits spectacular crimes. So part of this
is our fault. We should be just as upset about all those people who
serve their full, lengthy term, get out of prison and return to a life
of crime because we couldn't afford to rehabilitate them. We should be
just as upset about non-violent offenders who come out of prison with
an education in violent crime. We should be just as upset about all
those lives we could have prevented from going astray by investing our
precious resources in smarter education and job training programs
instead of prisons. And we should demand change.