MORE SERVING TIME AS TAXPAYERS FOOT BILL

Instead of the Show Me State, a better nickname for Missouri might be the
Slammer State.

More people are behind bars in Missouri based on population than any state
outside the South, according to new U.S. Department of Justice statistics
analyzed by The Kansas City Star. Missouri now has the eighth-highest
imprisonment rate in the nation.

Take inmate Gary Miller. He didn't kill, assault, or rob anyone. He didn't
steal anything.

So why, you might wonder, is the 35-year-old plumber and roofer from House
Springs, Mo., serving a four-year prison term at the Algoa Correctional
Center? It's because he ignored court orders to pay $17,000 in child
support for a son he had fathered nearly a decade ago.

Miller is now costing taxpayers nearly $13,000 a year to keep him locked
up, instead of going back to work to support his three children. Multiply
that by the 300 other so-called "deadbeat dads" behind bars in Missouri,
and that's costing taxpayers $3.9 million a year.

Add the 15,000 other nonviolent offenders imprisoned statewide, and you're
talking real money - $195 million.

"I hate sending people to prison, period. Even those who richly deserve
it," said Jefferson County Circuit Judge Edward Williams, who sentenced
Miller. "But for child-support laws to mean anything, prison has to be an
option."

More and more in Missouri, prison appears to be the preferred - and
increasingly costly - option.

Consider:

. One in 20 Missouri adult males today is either in prison, jail or on
probation or parole. Since 1990 the state's prison population has doubled,
now totaling nearly 30,000.

. Once imprisoned, inmates stay behind bars longer. Prison sentences in
Missouri are three months longer than the national average of 28 months.

. Since 1990, the costs for taxpayers to operate the prison system have
more than doubled, soaring to $575 million a year, making the Corrections
Department's budget the second-fastest growing in state government. Seven
new prisons have been built in the past seven years at a cost of $637 million.

Despite that extra money and those new buildings, the state's prisons could
be at capacity again in as little as 18 months, prison officials predict.
Already there's a shortage of beds for female inmates, said Gary Kempker,
the Corrections Department's director.

"That may actually put us in a situation where we have to take some male
space and convert it to women's space, which means we'll run out of male
space much sooner," Kempker said.

What's happening in Missouri is part of a national trend of
get-tough-on-crime laws and strict sentencing practices, especially for
violent criminals and drug offenders. As a result, the nation's prison and
jail population has reached a record 2.2 million people. Nearly one in
every 100 American adults is now in prison or jail.

But it comes at a price for taxpayers. The average cost of keeping
criminals behind bars has doubled, jumping to $286 a year for each U.S.
household, according to the Department of Justice.

Although costs are rising, proponents of the crackdown on criminals point
to plummeting crime rates as evidence that it's worth every penny.

"The public perception, and even into law enforcement and criminal justice,
is that more time (in prison) is better than less time," Kempker said.

Critics contend that putting nonviolent offenders such as Miller behind
bars for years only places an unnecessary burden on the prison system and
taxpayers.

In Kansas - where far fewer nonviolent offenders are incarcerated - the
prison picture is vastly different. Although Kansas' population is half the
size of Missouri's, the Sunflower State doesn't even have a third as many
prisoners.

Seventy percent of Kansas inmates were convicted of violent crimes,
compared with fewer than half of Missouri's. Indeed, while there are nearly
300 deadbeat dads in Missouri prisons, there are only 20 child-support
offenders in Kansas prisons. Missouri also has more than 1,000 drunken
drivers imprisoned, while Kansas has just 90.

Seeking Alternatives

Nonstop growth in inmate populations in Missouri is prompting state
officials to seek alternatives to prison for some small-time drug offenders
and others convicted of nonviolent crimes.

"What we know in our business is that more time (behind bars) is not always
better," Kempker said.

Investing in treatment and vocational training can be more effective and
cheaper in the long run for taxpayers than housing nonviolent offenders for
years in prison, he contended.

Some sentencing reform in Missouri is under way. Kempker serves on the
Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission, which was required by a 2003 state
law to publish sentencing recommendations for judges to follow for each
category of crime and each type of defendant.

Former Sen. Harold Caskey, the Butler Democrat who sponsored the
legislation, said he wanted to stop the rapid prison growth in Missouri
that, as he put it, "would be eating our lunch in the near future."

"Eventually, these people are coming back out into society," Caskey said.
"And we need to give them the tools that they need in order to make a
success of their new life once they're out."

Caskey's legislation required the sentencing commission to consider
work-release programs, home incarceration and other alternatives to prison
for some nonviolent offenders.

The panel favored those reforms for some drug offenders and others
convicted of nonviolent crime, said commission Chairman Michael A. Wolff,
who is also a Missouri Supreme Court justice.

The commission's recommendations are voluntary, Wolff pointed out, but he's
optimistic judges will follow them.

The panel also studied sentencing disparities - different punishments in
different counties for the same crime and same type of defendant. The
commission found widespread variations.

Urban counties, for example, send the lowest percentage of people to prison
but hand down the longest sentences. Urban and rural counties, however,
were equally tough on the most violent criminals.

States such as Missouri that have used voluntary sentencing guidelines have
experienced the most rapid growth in prison populations, said Kevin Reitz,
an expert on sentencing practices. Reitz, a professor at the University of
Colorado School of Law, compared states such as Missouri with those that
clamped mandatory sentencing guidelines on their judges.

"I looked at 15 states that had sentencing guidelines for five years or
more, and 10 of the 15 actually had rates of prison growth that were lower
and, in most cases, substantially lower than in the other states," Reitz said.

One possible reason, Reitz explained, is that states with mandatory
sentencing guidelines wanted to measure and predict the size of their
prison populations - and succeeded.

"Missouri is one of the more recent states to experiment even with
voluntary guidelines," he noted. "It may be that you're still on a learning
curve."

But before Missouri can put the new guidelines in place, the U.S. Supreme
Court may change the nation's sentencing landscape.

Last June the nation's high court ruled unconstitutional Washington state's
practice of allowing judges to increase sentences beyond a range of
recommended guidelines. The court ruled that only juries could do that, not
judges.

Many state courts may turn to Kansas as a model for sentencing guidelines
in order to pass the Supreme Court's test, said Daniel F. Wilhelm at the
Vera Institute of Justice in New York City. Wilhelm said the Kansas Supreme
Court several years ago corrected the sentencing guidelines problem now at
issue nationally.

Missouri, however, is among a handful of states that will not be affected
by the Supreme Court ruling, Wilhelm said, because it never adopted
mandatory sentencing guidelines.

Lessons Learned?

Miller, meanwhile, wouldn't be in prison for owing $17,000 in child support
if he'd made an effort to pay some of it, said Williams, the judge who
sentenced him.

"It's not easy for a guy in a nonsupport case to get a sentence to serve,"
Williams said. "They have to completely thumb their nose at the system."

Miller may have learned his lesson. He said he planned to make things right
when released in April.

When he went to prison, however, his children were left without any income,
he said. Utilities were shut off, and their mother had to go to work full
time. Family members also had to provide day care, he said.

"I don't think prison was the right thing to do," argued Miller, who said
he'd overcome a drinking problem before entering prison. "I think they need
to do something else. They should have put me in work release or something."