MAN'S PLIGHT RAISES ISSUE ON VALUE OF INCARCERATION

It would be easy enough to forget about guys like Nathan Variance. Problem
is, our pocketbooks won't let us.

Variance was recently featured in a Times-Union story about the struggles
of elderly, former prisoners trying to cope with life in the communities
that had to be protected from them decades earlier. Now 64, the habitual
drug offender has spent most of those years behind bars. Meaning that now,
he has to try to find a job with nothing but a rap sheet and incarceration
on his resume. Taxpayers will have to pay thousands a year to subsidize his
apartment, as well as food and medical needs.

But sadly enough, Variance's wasted life -- as well as the wasted lives of
other habitual offenders who are now being released into the community --
still has value. It has value because it raises a question that none of us
can afford to ignore.

The question it raises is whether this decades-old embrace of incarceration
over rehabilitation is finally reaching a point of diminishing returns --
if ever there were any returns to begin with.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, more than 120,000 people aged 50
and older were behind bars in 2002. That's double the number of inmates in
that age group who were imprisoned in 1992. In Florida, the number of
inmates 50 and older is expected to hit 9,501 this year, up from 5,605 in 2000.

Many of those inmates are serving long sentences for heinous offenses, such
as child sexual abuse and murder. But many prisoners who are aging behind
bars are those who were sentenced for drug crimes and non-violent offenses.
They were sentenced under laws designed to punish habitual offenders. Such
laws, like the 1995 Truth in Sentencing Law that requires inmates to serve
at least 85 percent of their sentence, were influenced by the scourge of
the drug trade and the pressure to keep those who were involved in it, or
committing crimes in connection with it, off the streets.

Now former drug offenders like Variance are back on the streets. But while
he is no longer a threat to society, he probably is as much a burden to it
as he ever was.

"At some point, the states need to worry about whether this cost is worth
the value of the punishment," said Malcolm Young, executive director of the
Sentencing Project, a Washington think tank that analyzes the impact of
mass incarceration on society. "It simply isn't."

And Variance's plight, as well as the plight of other former inmates who
now have to readjust to life on the outside, ought to make us all think
about whether we should begin to focus on changing the conditions that
spawn criminality rather than making more laws to contain those who succumb
to it.

I say this because the thing that spawned all the fear and the tough
sentencing -- the drug trade -- is something that still needs to be dealt
with. Communities in which there are no jobs, and in which people see no
possibilities, still exist. They are the places where drugs are part of the
economy and the culture. They are places where, sadly enough, incarceration
has become the fabric of daily life, and even the cost of doing business.

Long sentences do nothing to change those conditions. Resources -- the kind
that create jobs and counteract the hopelessness in such communities --
can. They can create environments in which people can become productive in
legitimate ways and not by being productive in lifestyles that lead to
prison instead of the corporate ladder.

But if Variance's plight and the plight of other old convicts raises
questions about the usefulness of pursuing long-term incarceration as a
solution to crime, I also hope it causes young people to question where
they are headed with their lives -- and see the dead end that criminality
leads to. Because even though they paid the price for their crimes by
spending most of their lives in prison, they're still paying for it.

And so are we.