NOT FISCALLY SOUND OR MORALLY JUSTIFIED

Florida's rush to build more prison beds even as the state's serious crime
rate stands at a 30-year low signals trouble ahead for the nation's justice
system.

All this prison building is neither fiscally sound nor morally justified.

The United States remains in the prison-building business like no other
Western democracy. In Western Europe, for instance, about one of every
1,000 people is behind bars. In this country, it's one of every 143 people.

Those numbers are much worse for young black males, whose sentences are
disproportionately tough compared to sentences for whites charged with
similar crimes. It's a national disgrace.

These inequities are generated by America's drug war, which continues to
nickel-and-dime treatment alternatives even as more and more studies
suggest that drug treatment can result in both public safety and reduced
public costs in the long term.

Gov. Jeb Bush maintains that dipping into the state's reserve funds to
spend $66 million to build 4,000 more prison beds is an investment in
public safety, which is "first and foremost" in importance for voters. No,
it's pandering to base instincts, nothing more.

It's a very expensive fix to cover the upsurge in offenders incarcerated
the past few months -- more than one in four of those for drug-related
crimes. And that's not counting the home robbers or car thieves who might
be stealing to pay for their addictions.

What might have happened the past two years had the state kept financing
drug-treatment programs for inmates at even puny 2001 levels?

There likely would be fewer arrests today for drug-related offenses. The
revolving door might not be swinging so wildly -- and costing us so much
more to close with steel and mortar.

The state is investigating what caused the upsurge in prison admissions,
concentrated in five counties, this summer. And there may be other reasons
contributing to the problem.

But do the math. It's not too complicated. We get what we pay for.

The state was spending about $15.5 million on prison treatment services in
2001. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks caused Florida's economy to tank,
the state slashed treatment by half and then again last year to $5.8 million.

Only four of Florida's 55 prisons kept in-house drug-treatment programs,
financed in part with federal funds, during the first round of cuts. Had
all of that money been kept in the pipeline, it could have saved a whole
lot of taxpayers' money and today helped turn around many lives.

In fact, the state's own corrections department has outlined the benefits
of drug treatment. Statistics it compiled for 1998-99 indicated that of the
offenders who completed drug-treatment programs in prisons, 70.5 percent
stayed out of trouble after two years. The rate was 77.5 percent for those
offenders who get monitored treatment instead of prison time.

Of course, treatment dollars have always been in short supply. But the
sharp cuts the past two years in treatment programs and the recent spike in
drug-related offenses only prove how important treatment can be.

Treatment's not only the compassionate thing to do, but it can save
taxpayers a bundle. You would think Bush, of all people, would have figured
that out by now, particularly after his family's own problems with addiction.

But no. The prison monster must be fed, and politicians are all too happy
to appear tough on crime even when the crime -- drug addiction -- should be
treated like the health threat it is.