STATE MAKES STRIDES ON PRISON COSTS

Incarceration Should Be For Those Who Pose Greatest Danger

A study released this week about Mississippi's exploding prison budget
reinforces what the Legislature has already started to realize.

The state went overboard during the 1990s in locking up lawbreakers, and
the resultant drain on the treasury has put a pinch on other areas of the
budget.

The corrections budget was the fastest growing area of state spending
during the 1990s, as Mississippi embarked on a prison building boom.
According to Grassroots Leadership, the Charlotte, N.C., nonprofit group
which prepared the study, Mississippi saw its per capita state corrections
funding rise 115 percent from 1989 to 1998.

Grassroots Leadership compares that growth to spending for higher
education, which rose less than 1 percent during the same time period.

But it's not only Mississippi's colleges and universities but all areas of
state government which come up short when corrections takes a growing slice
of the revenue pie.

After years of denial, lawmakers are starting to understand that the state
must more widely use less expensive alternatives to punishment than
incarceration.

Last year, the Legislature amended the overly harsh truth-in-sentencing law
they enacted in 1995. That law, which had required all inmates to serve 85
percent of their sentence before being eligible for release, was partly
responsible for the huge increase in the inmate population. Mississippi was
the only state which applied the 85 percent rule to both violent and
nonviolent offenders.

The change addresses that mistake. It makes nonviolent offenders eligible
for parole after serving one-fourth of their sentence.

The Legislature has also expanded the use of drug courts and house arrest.
Not only are these alternatives less expensive than incarceration, but
they're more likely to rehabilitate the offenders by allowing them to stay
with their families, work to make restitution to their victims, and to get
treated for their addiction.

Lawmakers must also get away from the mind set that looks at prisons and
jails as economic development tools. That misguided thinking led the
Legislature to fund an unnecessary 11th regional jail, even though the
other 10 regional jails and three medium-security private prisons were
operating below capacity. Once a facility is built, there is pressure on
the courts to lock up enough folks to keep it filled, even though less
expensive alternatives might be more appropriate.

Incarceration is expensive, costing Mississippi almost $11,000 a year for
every inmate it houses, according to Grassroots Leadership. Incarceration
should be reserved for those who pose the greatest danger to society.