INEFFICIENT INCARCERATION

North Carolina's taxpayers can't afford to lock up small-fry crooks for
years on end. It might be good politics, but it's bad money management.

Yet that's what we've been doing. If we keep it up, experts say, we might
have to build a new 1,000-bed prison every year. A hoosegow of that
magnitude runs about $90 million, which doesn't include the cost of
staffing and maintaining it.

We already have more than 33,000 people behind bars. Every year, that total
is rising by about 1,000.

It's those alarming numbers that have prompted legislators to reconsider
the way North Carolina sentences its convicts. The goal is to keep
dangerous criminals locked up for a long time, but not stuff expensive
cells with minor malefactors.

Under current sentencing law, you could be sent to the pen for 14 years if
you were convicted four times of such offenses as breaking into boats or
extracting coins from a Coke machine.

Nobody is suggesting that such crimes aren't serious. But murderers,
rapists and armed robbers pose a far greater threat to the rest of us than
losers who steal from boats or Coke machines.

And it makes little sense to impose sentences of many years on people
caught with small quantities of illegal drugs.

The N.C. House is thinking about tinkering with the sentencing law so that
judges aren't required to throw the book at people nailed for more than
three minor crimes. The book would remain handy for throwing at violent
criminals and those convicted of drug trafficking.

That would make excellent sense.