DOYLE SEEKS WAY OUT OF JAIL

Progressives have for more than a decade bemoaned increasingly
excessive spending on prisons in Wisconsin, a state that during the
1990s abandoned its historic commitment to rehabilitation and seeking
alternatives to incarceration in favor of a jail building spree that
combined unwise criminal justice strategies with fiscal
irresponsibility.

During the 1990s, each new state budget was a cause of frustration, as
more and more tax dollars were diverted from education, child care and
child welfare programs to pay for building prisons and then filling
them. As The Capital Times pointed out repeatedly during those years,
the state's priorities were out of whack.

Now, with his second budget, Gov. Jim Doyle has recognized the need to
reassert Wisconsin values of common sense and fiscal responsibility
when it comes to funding the state Department of Corrections.

The department will still get more than enough money. In fact, Doyle
wants to give the department a 4.7 percent increase in its allocation,
for an additional $83 million over the next two years. In no way will
it be possible to suggest that Doyle, a former Dane County district
attorney and state attorney general, has gone soft on crime.

But the increase in the corrections budget is the smallest in a
decade. And the governor has included in this budget innovative
proposals to improve and increase the availability of drug and alcohol
treatment for Wisconsinites who end up on the wrong side of the law.

The emphasis on drug and alcohol treatment is an essential step in the
right direction.

Estimates regarding the percentage of individuals who enter the
state's prison system with drug and alcohol problems vary widely, with
some specialists suggesting that the figure could be as high as 70
percent. No one doubts that the problem is substantial, nor does
anyone doubt that prisoners who finish their sentences without
receiving adequate drug and alcohol treatment are dramatically more
likely to commit new crimes and to end up in prison once more.

Doyle wants to break that cycle by:

. Providing more drug and alcohol treatment programs for prisoners,
for parolees and for offenders on probation.

. Creating a linkage between the successful completion of treatment
programs with the option of early release from prison, thus developing
a powerful incentive for inmates to get serious about getting treatment.

. Developing better programs for helping people who have finished
their sentences and their treatment programs to stay clean after they
leave prison.

The Doyle plan recognizes that Wisconsin - which currently
incarcerates 22,000 inmates while monitoring 68,000 men and women on
parole or probation - cannot afford to keep a revolving door on the
state's prisons. We have to break the cycle that sees so many of our
fellow citizens go to jail, get out of jail and go to jail again.

Even if Doyle's proposals are implemented and fully funded - and there
is no guarantee that Republican-controlled legislative chambers will
go along with his plan - they will not solve all the problems with
Wisconsin's criminal justice system. But they are clearly a part of
the solution. After a decade in which budget after budget has made
things worse, it is encouraging to have a governor who is trying to
fix a broken system.