PRISONS FILLING UP WITH METH-MAKERS THIRD IN A SERIES

Larry Norris, director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, talks
recently about the impact methamphetamine cases are having on the
prison population. A new law requires those convicted on meth-related
charges serve no less than 70 percent of their sentence.

Inmates convicted of methamphetamine-related drug charges are stacking
up in Arkansas prisons.

And a strict, new sentencing law for methamphetamine-category
convictions that requires the convict to serve no less than 70 percent
of sentences given by the courts has put nearly 600 meth dealers in
prison with sentences that run an average of seven years longer than
those being served by non-meth drug offenders, according to Larry
Norris, director of the Arkansas Department of Correction.

If the methamphetamine phenomenon continues to increase, Arkansans
will have to reckon with the costs of keeping such convicts, Norris
said. Today, the cost of detaining some 576 inmates in prison on
meth-related convictions is an estimated $50 million over the
nine-year sentence average.

Norris isn't whining.

The state Legislature in April found about $53 million in new revenue
for the Department of Correction's 2004-05 biennial budget to finish
the $406-million budget for those two years. The prison system was
competing for funds directly with Medicaid interests and, indirectly,
with public education. Still, the public should know that the impact
of the methamphetamine phenomenon does not end when those convicted
are carted off to state prison, Norris said. The costs continue. The
average stay of the first-time meth dealer is nine years, compared to
two years for the cocaine convict.

Norris' remedy is a philosophical one: "We need to be locking up the
people we're afraid of, not just the people we're mad at," he says.

Often the two issues overlap. Meth dealers and addicts are often
people to be afraid of, and the messes created for property owners
where meth labs operate are certainly issues that should make the
public mad, Norris said.

Until society figures out another way to deal with the problems, the
cost of keeping the convicts will go up and up, Norris said.

The problem created for the Department of Correction is simple math --
almost 600 meth inmates stay an average of 7 years longer than other
drug offenders.

Norris said those 576 inmates represent a prison population equal to
nearly half of the 1,200 inmates that were backed up in county jails
just a few weeks ago.

The problem is compounded by an annual prisoner population growth rate
of about 500. The new money will open about 500 new units in regular
prison.

A better illustration of the inmate "we're mad at" may be those who
have been released from prison on parole. Norris said those convicts
often come back into the prison system for various technical
violations, one of the most common being a "dirty" drug test.

"They stump their toe (a dirty drug test), and the parole officer gets
mad, and they're back in for an average stay of nine months," Norris
said. The DOC has a plan for those inmates that could keep at least
300 from clogging up the system each year.

The new revenue to the department will help the department fund the
Technical Violator Program that will serve as a 60-day buffer between
freedom and hard prison time, where the technical violator will
receive intensive counseling and be required to keep a more rigid
reporting schedule. The per diem cost of the TVP program will be about
$3 a day versus $41 per day for detention in prison.

The Technical Violator Program will include a new facility at Malvern
that will house up to 300 TVP inmates for up to 60 days.

Inmates released on parole from the DOC are required to have a parole
plan, but the plan often falls short of expectations, and the inmate
finds himself back in the circle of friends and influences that made
him a technical violator.

Wendell Taylor, chief of field security for Cummins, said some 1,100
Arkansas prisoners are eligible for parole but lack family and other
resources in the free world to develop an acceptable parole plan.

On the issue of education, Norris said the DOC's work in that area may
be somewhat obscure.

The DOC is a school district with an average enrollment each year
around 4,000 students. Inmates who do not have a high school diploma
when entering prison will not be released from prison until they earn
the Arkansas High School Diploma, also known as the GED (General
Education Development) diploma. The DOC conferred the Arkansas High
School Diploma to more than 600 graduates during ceremonies in May and
the associate of arts college degree to two.

The DOC is a nursing home, too. Some 200 inmates of the DOC's "graying
population" are residents of the prison nursing home. Norris says
"there's some mean old men" in the graying population who are
nonetheless aged people with medical needs typical of the aged inside
and outside prison walls. The state must provide that medical care.