THE PRICE OF PRISONS

Thirteen million Americans have been convicted of felonies and spent
time in prison -- more than the population of Greece. And they tend to
return to prison again and again. Of the 650,000 inmates who will be
released in 2004, two-thirds will be back behind bars within few
years. The cost of keeping so many in jail -- the operating expenses
for state prisons alone is around $30 billion a year -- has created
bipartisan concern. Congress, which spent so many years obsessed with
how to look tough on crime, is currently considering legislation that
would tackle two of the big factors behind the revolving-door
phenomenon: the huge number of mentally ill people in prison, and the
difficulty ex-convicts have in carving out new lives in the
law-abiding world.

A bill known as the Second Chance Act, endorsed by the White House and
developed primarily by Representative Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio,
and Representative Danny Davis, Democrat of Illinois, would invest a
modest $112 million over the next two years in drug treatment and
mentoring programs aimed at helping newly released felons rejoin their
communities. It would also do away with a punitive federal law that
denies college loans to applicants with drug offenses, even if the
offenses resulted in no jail time and occurred in the distant past.

The loan ban, which has been used to deny aid to more than 140,000
students, would remain in effect only for people who committed drug
crimes while actually receiving federal aid. Unfortunately, the bill
would not eliminate a similar rule that excludes inmates from the
federal Pell Grant program.

The Second Chance Act calls for a task force to review the obstacles
that keep ex-felons pinned to the margins of society. If this bill is
passed, as it deserves to be, the task force will find a wealth of
information in a recent study by the Legal Action Center, a criminal
justice policy group, which identifies laws in all 50 states that bar
former convicts from scores of professions that require state licenses.

While it is important to screen for prison records when hiring
teachers or day care workers, it makes no sense to tell men and women
who once served time for breaking state drug laws that they are barred
for life from careers as barbers or landscape architects. Some states
even strip convicts of their driver's licenses.

The House is also considering a bill that recognizes the role that
mentally ill offenders play in the recidivism problem. About one in
six prison inmates is mentally ill. A spate of recent studies describe
American prisons as mental institutions by default -- although they
are institutions in which the disturbed inmates get no treatment to
speak of. Once they complete their sentences, such inmates are
generally dumped onto the streets without medication or therapy, and
rapidly end up back in jail.

The Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, which was
passed by the Senate in 2003, calls for an investment of $100 million
for inmates' mental health services, including training for people who
work in mental health courts. These courts make sure that offenders
with mental problems comply with treatment regimens.

Opponents are already arguing that given the government's enormous
deficit, Congress should reject any bills that involve new spending.
But given the soaring price of incarceration, and a prison population
that is growing, the most costly option is to do nothing.