STATES' TIGHTENING BUDGETS COMPEL EASING OF PRISON-SENTENCE POLICIES

Tight budgets have forced state lawmakers to ease up on their
get-tough-on-crime approach toward imprisoning nonviolent felons, even as
federal prisons continue to face growing numbers of inmates overall.

A pair of studies to be released Thursday say that state governments around
the country increasingly are reconsidering mandatory sentencing statutes
passed in the 1990s and exploring alternate sentencing. According to the
studies, budget crunches and changing attitudes toward the jailing of
nonviolent drug offenders have forced the changes.

Amid rising crime rates, many states passed tough truth-in-sentencing laws
that required longer sentences while cutting back parole and probation.
That meant more prisoners and corrections departments taking a larger share
of state tax receipts. One of the reports said that as much as 7% of state
spending now goes for corrections programs.

Budget problems aren't unique to state capitols. The Bush administration,
forced to squeeze domestic spending to wage its antiterrorism campaign,
proposed a slight cut for the federal Bureau of Prisons in its 2003 budget,
with prison construction taking much of the hit. Nevertheless, White House
number-crunchers expect an average inmate population next year that is 8.4%
above current levels.

The trend illustrates the gap between the plateau in state populations and
still-soaring federal numbers. Officials expect that the divergence will
continue as long as tough federal sentencing guidelines remain in place.

Last month, two Republican senators introduced legislation addressing this.
Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Orrin Hatch of Utah called for
rationalizing the disparate sentences handed out for crack against powder
cocaine, raising the limit for the amount of crack cocaine needed to
trigger mandatory minimums.

The report from the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit
think tank that opposes tough mandatory sentences, found that the states
and federal government are spending a combined $40 billion to hold inmates.
More than half of that -- $24 billion -- is going to incarcerate nonviolent
offenders. In 1978, national prison costs totaled $5 billion.

Polls by the policy institute and other groups have shown that Americans
increasingly favor alternative sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders and
prefer to see their tax dollars spent on things like education over prisons.

"It's the fiscal crisis and the change in public opinion that's driving
this trend. Increasingly, the public understands that the object of the
criminal justice system should be fewer victims, not more inmates," said
the institute's president, Vincent Schiraldi.

While state prison populations have all but stopped growing, federal prison
populations have continued to climb. As of Dec. 31, 2000, the most recent
year for which comparable data are available, state prison populations
inched ahead 0.65%; the federal system, though, grew 7.5%.

The federal prisons bureau is planning to build 18 new prisons, but some
won't open for several years. Four are scheduled to open next year and two
others will be expanded, adding space for nearly 5,200 inmates.

The other study, by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group in Washington
that also opposes mandatory sentencing, found that four states have scaled
back on the tough sentencing minimums. Five states expanded drug-treatment
as a form of sentencing, while 10 states were in the process of either
closing existing prisons or cutting back on prison expansions.

"Reforms that might have been considered politically risky five or eight
years ago are less cause for concern among decision makers right now," said
the Sentencing Project's assistant director, Marc Mauer.