FILLING FASTER THAN ARE BUILT

According to a recent story in the Longview Daily News, 42 percent of
people entering our prisons are repeat offenders. The prediction is
that we will realize a 28 percent increase in our prison population
in the next five years. Do these facts not tell us that we are doing
something wrong?

We are filling up our prisons faster than we can build them. The cost
of corrections has increased from $500 million some 10 years ago to a
current $1.1 billion. Our dumb punishment-only approach to crime has
netted a mass incarceration that is unsustainable.

Would not a better plan be to eliminate the mandatory minimum
sentencing laws so that judges can judge and so that people are not
spending their entire lives in prison because they made bad decisions
when young and dumb and probably addicted? Would not some of that
money be better spent on treatment, education and rehabilitation so
that recidivism is reduced and therefore prison population?

Michaela Mosteller

Cathlamet