The State

S.C. PRISON SYSTEM DESCRIBED AS WASTEFUL

South Carolina wastes almost $6 million a year housing low-risk inmates in
expensive high-security prisons.

According to an analysis of Department of Corrections figures by The State
newspaper, about 4,300 - or 20 percent - of the inmates in maximum-security
prisons should be in less-costly medium-or minimum-security facilities.

That's money poorly spent during tight budget times, says prisons director
Gary Maynard.

"It's an unusual problem that we've got here," he said. "It's more
expensive to maintain people in maximum security."

Housing low-risk prisoners in high-security prisons also exposes too many
nonviolent inmates to the most brutal ones and makes it harder for
lower-risk prisoners to successfully return to life back home, Maynard says.

"It puts them in a more difficult environment," he said. "If they were a
(minimum security) inmate, they could be earning money and paying restitution.

"It's hurting their chance for re-entry" into the community.

Maynard wants to reverse the inmate classification problem, "sort of
cleaning the slate, and start building the department the way we see it."

Classification is a term for rating inmates by the security risk they pose,
often based on the crime that put them behind bars.

Most prison systems house inmates according to their classification. But
for nearly five years, South Carolina has been mixing inmates rated
minimum- and medium-security risks in maximum-security prisons.

Lower-risk inmates have been housed in higher-security facilities because
the services they need are located there, Maynard says.

Those services - including drug-treatment programs, schools for young
offenders, some medical services and the largest prison industries programs
- - are not available at less-secure prisons.

"That was probably a good rationale at the time when there was plenty of
money," says Maynard, who took over as prisons director in January 2001.
"It was a different philosophy but not necessarily right or wrong."

National prison consultants are studying the classification problem both in
South Carolina and nationwide. Maynard says it will take about a year to
change things in South Carolina.

In the meantime, it costs about $2,375 more per prisoner each year to place
inmates classified as minimum-security risks in the state's nine
maximum-security prisons, according to agency figures analyzed by The State
newspaper.

On a typical day in February, 871 inmates classified minimum risk were in
maximum-security prisons. Projected over a year, that would cost taxpayers
an extra $2 million.

Further, it costs about $1,070 more per inmate per year to keep
medium-security risk prisoners in maximum-security facilities.

The state had 3,484 such in-mates in maximum-security prisons on a typical
day last month. Annually, that amounts to $3.7 million.

The yearly total: $5.7 million being spent during times of shrinking budgets.

State government cut the prisons' budget by $41 million - to $284 million -
this fiscal year.

Budget problems have caused state officials to cut the current state
budget, which runs through June 30, by 8 percent, or more than $460
million, compared to the prior year.

S.C. Out Of Step?

Former corrections director Mike Moore instituted the classification system
in 1997, deciding to centralize major programs in maximum-security prisons,
corrections officials say. Moore was hired to crack down on inmates and
toughen prison policies.

His classification system was unusual especially because of the numbers of
inmates Moore moved to maximum facilities, prisons experts say.

"I don't know of too many other states that were doing it that way at the
time ... not to that degree," says Sammie Brown, who directs prison
classification studies for the National Institute of Corrections in
Washington, D.C.

Brown, a 28-year veteran of the South Carolina prison system, has been on
loan to the corrections research organization for four years.

Maynard has worked in two other state prison systems and says that usually
about one-third of the inmates are kept in each of the three security levels.

In South Carolina, just more than half the 21,000 inmates are in
maximum-security prisons.

The state's high incarceration rate makes the practice even more costly.

About 540 of every 100,000 S.C. residents were in prison on average through
most of the 1990s, according to a survey by the Corrections Yearbook, a
manual published by the Criminal Justice Institute.

Consultants with the National Institute of Corrections are working on
changing Moore's classification system. Their report should be ready in
about six months, Brown says.

Joann Morton, a specialist in prison issues in the University of South
Carolina College of Criminal Justice, is a critic of Moore's classification
system.

Putting more inmates in highly guarded prisons reduces the chances of
escapes, which the public likes, Morton says.

But it makes little financial sense and may pose an even higher risk for
the public years later.

"Ninety-something percent of these people are going to go back to the
community," she says. "You don't do that by putting them in
maximum-security for five, 10, 20 years and then open the door."

A Closer Look

Corrections Department figures show that it costs an average of $16,067 a
year to house an inmate in a maximum-security prison. The analysis is based
on data for June through December.

But some of the nine maxi-mum-security facilities are more expensive to
operate than others.

Corrections figures show that it costs about $7,900 more per inmate each
year to house prisoners at Kirkland Correctional Institution on Broad River
Road, for instance, than at Kershaw Correctional Institution in Lancaster
County - both maximum-security prisons.

Although Kirkland has about 400 fewer inmates, it has double the personnel
costs because of the staffing needs of a 50-bed unit that houses the most
dangerous inmates in the prison system, an orientation unit that processes
all inmates as they arrive in prison, and medical services, including the
pharmacy for all 29 prisons.

The annual per-inmate cost for the seven medium-security prisons averages
$14,998, corrections data show. That cost can vary among prisons by as much
as $3,100.

The average annual cost per inmate at the 10 minimum-security facilities is
$13,692, according to agency figures. The cost among these facilities can
vary by as much as $7,400.

As a group, the state's three women's prisons are the most expensive, at an
average annual cost of $19,240 per inmate, ac-cording to corrections figures.

An agency budget analyst says women's prisons are more ex-pensive because
it costs more to house fewer inmates in small prisons, since operating and
construction costs can't be spread over many facilities.

Brown, the S.C. prisons administrator on loan to the national research
organization, says Maynard's approach to inmate classification is correct.

"The current administration is trying to make improvements," she says. "I'm
real comfortable that they are progressing in the right direction."