CRIME STILL PAYING WELL

We should not be surprised at the Justice Department's newly released
data which show the prison and jail population is on the rise:

As of June 30, 2004, the nation's jails and prisons held 2.131 million
inmates -- an increase of 2.3 percent from the previous year.

John Cole Vodicka says the figures are disturbing. Approximately
51,000 rural southwest Georgians are in a prison cell, a jail cell or
on felony parole or felony probation. "These figures continue to
rise," he says. "We, as a nation, have not come to grips with the fact
that we are becoming a nation of the keepers and the kept. For the
most part, the people we see in the rural counties are troubled
people. I'm not trying to excuse offensive behavior, but many of them
are mentally ill. Our jails are becoming dumping grounds for people
with mental health problems. Our jails are becoming receptacles for
people who are addicted to alcohol and/or drugs; who are illiterate;
who are at this time in their lives unemployable."

Cole Vodicka is director of the Prison & Jail Project, a watchdog
organization in Americus, Ga.

Figures from The Sentencing Project, an independent, nonprofit
organization, outline who are incarcerated:

. More than 283,000 people with mental illnesses.

. More than 453,000 drug offenders; in the federal system more than
one-third are low-level offenders; 58 percent of state drug prisoners
have no history of violence or high-level drug activity.

. A rapidly increasing female population: up eight-fold from 12,300 in
1980 to 103,310 in 2004. In 2003, 38 percent of the women in jail and
prison were African-American and 17 percent Latina.

. An estimated 121,000 inmates older than 50 in state and federal
prisons, more than doubling from 1992-2002.

"Crime rates have dropped fairly consistently over the last 12 years,
which should mean there are fewer candidates for jail and prison
sentences. Yet the overall number of people behind American bars keeps
going up, and this country remains the world's leader in
incarceration," says Malcolm Young, executive director of The
Sentencing Project, which works toward a fair and effective criminal
justice system. The Sentencing Project is based in Washington, D.C.

Cole Vodicka says our judicial system shoves people out of sight and
out of mind.

"And some of these folks are getting some pretty significant amounts
of prison time. When they appear and reappear in a courtroom, there is
a level of frustration and anger coming from judges and prosecutors,"
he says.

Young says, "Reliance on incarceration without adequate attention to
other factors is expensive and may be misdirected. A conservative
estimate of the average cost of locking up one person for one year is
$22,000. Last year's increase of 48,452 inmates carries a price tag of
$1.066 billion -- public monies not available for education, drug
treatment, mental health, and other community-building services."

Were there alternatives in our communities, a number of people would
probably not have to go to prison, Cole Vodicka says.

"The really worrisome thing is that in the last two or three decades
we have seen that prison population number jump from 300,000 to 2.3
million," Cole Vodicka says. "In that time we have created an industry
that needs -- that relies on -- people being caged. And we are feeding
that industry whether we are doing it knowingly or not. We have become
beholden to corporations who are building prisons and operating
prisons. Architects and contractors and state agencies need people in
prison and jail cells to survive, or to make a profit."

Cole Vodicka says he hopes we will one day change our minds about who
we incarcerate and why. But that won't alleviate our problems. "In our
communities and in our societies," he says, "we will still have this
industry that will be demanding that we feed them bodies to fill up
the cages."