LOOKING AT DOLLARS SPENT ON JUSTICE

WE HAVE a prime opportunity during the next year or two to step back and
take a look at whom we send to our state prisons and how long we require
them to remain behind bars.

North Carolina state government will partner with the Council of State
Government's Justice Center to conduct a "justice reinvestment" study.

The study is aimed at analyzing objective data surrounding our criminal
justice system and looking at options for redirecting our money that could
change the number of people sent to prison while at the same time reducing
crime.

The Justice Center has a track record of helping other states. Two that
come to mind are Texas and Kansas, where hundreds of millions of dollars
have been saved by strengthening their probation and parole systems,
resulting in reduced recidivism.

As a growing state, North Carolina will have to spend millions building new
prisons and providing correctional officers to oversee new prisoners if the
current trends continue.

That is sure to hit taxpayers in the pocketbook or eat into other state
priorities. While public safety must remain the top priority for state
government, there's no reason money spent protecting us from criminals
cannot be spent wisely.

One of the areas the group will have to take a hard look at is the
effectiveness of our habitual felon law, sometimes called a "three strikes"
law. Is such a provision in the law really necessary -- particularly for
nonviolent felons? The state's sentencing structure already takes into
account previous convictions. The habitual felon law seems to be an excuse,
not so figuratively speaking, to lock someone up and throw away the key.

Taking a hard look at how we incarcerate people on non-trafficking drug
charges would also be wise. The state should start looking at drug abuse as
a health problem instead of a criminal justice problem.

According to Department of Correction statistics, more than 5,000 inmates
last year were serving sentences for non-trafficking drug charges. At an
average cost of nearly $27,000 to keep an inmate in prison for one year,
the savings from not incarcerating such inmates would approach $135 million
a year.

What's encouraging about the study is the cross-section of North Carolina
leaders supporting the effort.

Leaders from all three branches of state government have signed on, as have
leaders of both political parties in the General Assembly.

It will certainly be a good thing for us to take off our partisan and
ideological filters to see what the study reveals. At worst, we'll have a
lot of data available on which to base future decisions.

At best, we could save hundreds of millions of tax dollars and have a safer
state.