BUILD MINDS INSTEAD OF PRISONS

Your Sept. 1 editorial about spending on prisons instead of education was
right on the money ("Prison Precedence: State should be building
opportunities, not more cellblocks, for minority men"). There is no
question that investing in children -- for preschool; K-12; medical, mental
health and nutritional care; and preventing abuse and neglect -- is the
long-term solution to crime.

Constant prison expansion is not a solution to crime even in the short run.
Contrary to political rhetoric, we are not paying to keep ourselves safe
from the 50,000 most dangerous people in Michigan. Hundreds of millions of
dollars go to locking up property and drug offenders, aging prisoners with
medical problems, people with good institutional records who are being kept
far longer than their sentencing judges intended, and probationers and
parolees who have violated the terms of their supervision but who have not
committed new crimes.

We lock up the mentally ill, the addicted and the illiterate instead of
investing more in mental health treatment, substance abuse prevention and
education.

The enormous growth in corrections spending has resulted from deliberate
policy choices that should be publicly debated and assessed for their
cost-effectiveness, not their emotional appeal.

Barbara R. Levine, Executive Director, Citizens Alliance on Prisons and
Public Safety Lansing