PAY INMATES? NO, BUT LET'S CORRECT SOME PRISON PROBLEMS

Georgia's next governor, Nathan Deal, said
Wednesday the state must cut its work force to balance the budget.

Psst=85Mr. Deal! Wanna know who ought to be first
in line for the pink slips? How about the prison
guards who sold so many cell phones to inmates
that the jailbirds were able to organize a
short-lived protest in state penitentiaries this month?

Depending on whom you believe, either the wardens
at four state prisons locked down inmates for
several days to pre-empt a protest, or the
prisoners themselves refused to leave their cells
to perform their work assignments.

The inmates used their contraband mobile phones =AD
it's a felony in this state for a prisoner to
possess one =AD to send text messages to one
another. Some of them used the phones to call an
AJC reporter to claim credit for the work stoppage.

Their gripe? In large part, it's that they want
to be paid for working jobs within the lockups and on other state property.

One of them, a convicted murderer named Diego,
told our reporter that he paid a prison guard
$350 for a pre-paid phone. So, forgive me for
doubting these guys are truly hurting for cash.

But let's say the offending guards are caught.
And let's say the inmates are made to understand
they're not going to start getting paid =AD not
beyond the food, shelter and health care they already receive, that is.

And certainly not when the state is eyeing up to
$2 billion more in budget cuts. Far from paying
inmates, the Georgia Department of Corrections,
like other state agencies, will probably have to further tighten its belt.

We spend about $1 billion a year on Corrections.
The agency needs some creative, money-saving solutions.

One in 13 Georgia adults is in jail or on
probation or parole. That's the nation=92s highest
rate. And once inmates are released, they're
returning to prison in alarming numbers. During
the past decade, two in three ex-cons have been
re-arrested within three years. Something isn't working.

There's little wiggle room for dealing with
killers like Diego. But we ought to look
seriously at alternative options for those incarcerated for lesser crimes.

And we might find some possibilities in another
historically tough-on-crime state: Texas.

In a recent essay for the free-market Georgia
Public Policy Foundation, Marc Levin of the
Center for Effective Justice in Texas focused on
some policies toward nonviolent offenders in his
state that appear to be more effective and less
expensive than what we're trying.

Since 2005, Levin wrote, Texas has saved more
than $2 billion in projected prison costs through
=93reforms to strengthen community-based
supervision, sanctions and treatment options for
nonviolent offenders.=94 At the same time, the
state's crime rate in 2009 was at its lowest level since 1973.

Here's a place to start in Georgia. According to
Levin, we spend $151 million a year to house
about 9,000 drug offenders. It's not only dealers
who are serving long sentences: The =93average
[Georgia] inmate released in 2009 on a drug
possession charge,=94 he wrote, =93spent 21 months locked up=85=94

We have drug courts and day-reporting centers
that are ripe for expansion. Levin's Texas
example also suggests more drug testing,
graduated punishments and incentives for parolees to behave themselves.

Then we can focus on keeping violent guys like
Diego behind bars. They need to pay for their crimes, not get paid.