TOUGH ON CRIME DOESN'T ALWAYS MEAN PRISON

08-01-2004 A popular political position in the 1980s and early 1990s was
the image of a candidate in front of a jail cell door, slamming the iron
gate shut and proclaiming himself to be tough on crime.

Effective symbolism. Ineffective system. And now the ill effects of zero
tolerance, three strikes and habitual offender concepts are being felt from
one end of this country to the other. Alabama is no exception. Overcrowding
and an underfunded correctional system make it safer to let some criminals
out than to keep them inside. That's why Gov. Bob Riley's plan to speed up
paroles makes sense. He rightly expanded the Pardons and Paroles Board and
hired additional parole officers to help ease overcrowding and deal with
the transition. Alabama ranked second in the nation this year in early
paroles at a 31 percent increase over the past year, allowing mostly
non-violent criminals to be released.

While the tough on crime politicians may be alarmed by that rate, they have
missed the point about the flawed system they helped create. For far too
long, they have been pouring money into the "last chance" effort of prisons
rather than the programs at the beginning - targeting at risk youth - when
there is a better chance at preventing a life of crime. Couple that with a
system that puts murderers and bad check writers in the same prison, and it
is easy to see that alternative sentencing is a better course. Instead of
pandering to what they think the people want to hear, politicians need to
come clean with the public about the real problems facing the corrections
system. And they need to develop and support an effective cradle-to-grave
set of programs that keeps prison as a last resort, just as they were meant
to be.

Only then will they truly be tough on crime