HOW MANY (EX-)PRISONERS IS A RECESSION WORTH?

Utah considers freeing 400 convicted felons by March 1. California inches
toward early release of nonviolent and elderly prisoners. States begin to
lay off prison guards. Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton endures political
brickbats for providing early release to 567 nonviolent prison inmates.

Everywhere, the reason is clear. States must balance their budgets. They
face the worst fiscal crises of a half-century or more. It costs $20,000 to
$25,000 a year just to hold one prisoner. So after three decades of tough
"law and order" penal policy, the temptation is growing to change course
and release some of the 2 million prisoners incarcerated in the United States.

But will the criminal justice establishment - and the media - allow us a
clear-headed debate about the choices states face?

I'm not hopeful. The knee-jerk reaction is to suggest we'll have soaring
crime rates soon after the first criminal gets early release. An example:
Ogden, Utah, Police Lt. Dave Tarran recently told The Deseret News that
early releases would constitute "our worst possible nightmare."

Don't "seek to remedy budgetary woes by endangering the safety of our
communities," warns Lawrence Brown, director of the California District
Attorneys Association.

A New York Times story emphasizes how the state of Kentucky's early
releases include men convicted of burglary, theft, arson and drug
possession, "some of them chronic criminals." What the report doesn't note
is that the average sentence of the Kentucky convicts was for only three
years and that the inmates were released, on average, only 80 days early.

The Times also reports some states "have gone so far" as to repeal
mandatory sentences - as if such rigid penalties, enacted at the height of
the country's "lock-'em-up" extremism, aren't decried by many lawyers,
judges included.

Sadly, we're being presented with a false choice. Either, goes the message,
we can pack our prisons and have "safe" communities. Or, we can reduce
incarceration and live in fear.

There's a sliver of truth in the choice: Surely we want incorrigible,
violent offenders incarcerated as long as can be.

But most prisoners aren't incorrigible, and most will be released one day
anyway. For them, it's fair to ask: Was prison the right place to be sent
in the first place - especially the huge numbers of nonviolent offenders,
including those held for minor drug-dealing or drug-possession offenses?

And will prison correct, or actually exacerbate, some of the other prime
reasons for crime: joblessness and poverty, splintered families, mental
instability, peer pressure from gangs? Might it be that substance abuse
treatment, community service, restitution, intense (and adequately staffed)
probation tied to local community policing, could do better?

The public is way ahead of the politicians on alternatives to
incarceration, argues Marc Mauer of the Washington-based Sentencing Project
(and editor of the recent book: "Invisible Punishment: The Collateral
Consequences of Mass Imprisonment").

Crime has not only dropped since the early '90s, Mauer argues - the public
is less fearful. Drug courts - based on the premise that treatment will
serve addicted people better than a jail cell - have spread to 400
locations nationally, and are well accepted.

But there are disturbing problems. One is the prison industry: many small
towns embraced prisons as a job generator - even though the locations are
sometimes hundreds of miles from prisoners' homes and their families. Now
prison town legislators are fans of incarceration.

In California, Gov. Gray Davis has been reluctant to call for prison
reduction - because, say some, he received what The Associated Press calls
"lavish" prison guard union gifts to his re-election campaign.

Then there's race. Vast majorities of inmates are now blacks and Hispanics
- - even though their use of illegal drugs is no more than that of whites. In
big cities, up to 75 percent of black men can expect to be incarcerated
during their lifetimes. They get sent to distant state penitentiaries where
they can only call home by exorbitantly expensive collect calls (an area
rife with kickback fees for prison operators).

In the Trent Lott affair, George Bush spoke out for racial accord. But what
happened when Congress last year considered a bill to start equalizing
penalties for powder cocaine possession and crack cocaine? Currently
penalties are 100 times as high for possessing crack cocaine, which thrives
in the inner cities. There may be no more blatantly racist element in
federal law. But Bush's operatives put the kibosh on any reform.

The prison conundrum, in short, is deeply ingrained into today's American
way of life. It's part of our enduring racism. We talk an equity game but
actually have preferred a sort of blind vengeance.

The ray of hope now is that the fearsome budget crisis of '03 will oblige
us to rethink incarcerating some of the 2 million we now hold. Two million
is 500 percent more than the early '70s. How many do we really need to
imprison for our safety? Couldn't economy and security - and American
ideals - coincide for once?