PRICE TO PAY FOR LOCK 'EM UP WAYS

Corrections commissioners lays out the choices. Mississippi likes locking
up folks. It just doesn't like paying for it. The state can't have it both
ways, or at least not much longer.

Christopher Epps, the career veteran of the Mississippi corrections system
who just completed his first year as head of the agency, laid out the
choices for legislative budget leaders this week.

Either the Legislature, facing its worst financial crisis in more than a
decade, has to pony up tens of millions of dollars it doesn't really have
or it needs to empower the Department of Corrections to start turning
inmates out sooner.

Epps, who has drawn high marks so far in the job, has cultivated a good
relationship with lawmakers over the years. That should help him convince
legislators that he's not exaggerating the dilemma.

The Department of Corrections ended its most recent budget year with a $6
million deficit. This year, it's looking at a whopping $67.5 million
shortfall, meaning, according to Epps, that the agency is going to run out
of money to pay its bills soon after the first of the year unless the
deficit is covered.

Epps said he isn't whining about the situation, but just laying out the
facts. Wait, however, for the screams when the Department of Corrections
stops paying counties, private prisons and regional jails for housing and
feeding state inmates. Or when the medical services company under contract
with the state stops being compensated for providing health care to inmates.

The problem is, Mississippi has more inmates than it can afford.
Mississippi has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the United
States, a nation with the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

The state's prison population has more than doubled since 1995, from 10,669
inmates to 23,473. Not coincidentally, 1995 was the year that Mississippi
lawmakers enacted the toughest "truth-in-sentencing" law in the nation. The
law dictated that Mississippi's justice system, which already had a
proclivity to lock up lawbreakers, would keep them behind bars for longer
and longer periods of time.

Two years ago, the Legislature relaxed the law, but not enough to stem the
tide. Getting the Legislature to revisit the law is not going to be easy -
in part because lawmakers would be scared of being portrayed as "soft" on
crime; in part because there actually may be a correlation between rising
rates of incarceration and falling rates of crime. This summer, the U.S.
Justice Department reported two remarkable statistics. The nation's prison
population reached an all-time high at the same time that major crime fell
to a 30-year low. The drop in the crime rate was even more remarkable
because criminal activity usually rises during an economic downturn as the
country has been experiencing the last couple of years.

We believe that expensive prison space should be reserved for violent and
repeat offenders, the type of criminals whom society has most to fear. We
think that treatment and restitution programs are not only cheaper but a
wiser investment for non-violent drug-related crimes, which account for
about 15 percent of Mississippi's current prison population, according to Epps.

But if we're wrong, if incarceration is preferable to other alternatives,
then let's see the advocates agree to pay for it in higher taxes or in cuts
in other services, like schools and roads and health care for the poor and
elderly.

That is the choice that Epps is laying out.