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WASHINGTON--Sadly,
Formed last year, the privately sponsored Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons brought together 20 civic leaders, scholars, prison officials, and a former prisoner.
Based on many public hearings, interviews and research, the panel's recent report, "Confronting Confinement," is a how-to manual to help wardens cope with overcrowded prisons that breed violence, disease, and recidivism.
What is really needed, however, is a road map to drastically shrink Virginia's prison population--and, at the same time, save state taxpayers a lot of money.
The commission frankly admits, "It was beyond the scope of our inquiry to explore how states and the federal government might sensibly reduce prisoner populations," but then added, "Yet all that we studied is touched by, indeed
While the study rightly pins responsibility for our overcrowded prisons on tough-on-crime laws passed by state and federal legislators, it does not look for ways to downsize America's booming prison industry that adds more than 1,000 new inmates per week, costs more than $60 billion a year, and employs about 750,000 workers to watch over 2.2 million inmates--almost double the 1990 prison population.
The commission never asked this question: Why pay room and board to put someone like Martha Stewart, or a pot smoker, or a car thief, behind bars, when modern electronic tracking devices can easily keep tabs on these nonviolent criminals at a fraction of the cost?
Virginians are not immune to these concerns. Virginia taxpayers shelled out about $696 million in 2003 to hire 21,284 state and local corrections employees to watch over 56,000 inmates. That's about $12,430 per year, per inmate.
Nationally, about one-half of all state prisoners have been convicted of violent crimes, including murder and assault. The other half--in the case of Virginia, about 28,000 inmates--are nonviolent, many of them convicted of possession or sale of small quantities of drugs.
For such offenders--and for low-level burglars and embezzlers--prison can do more harm than good. Many will leave prison more violent and possessing better criminal skills than when they arrived. And even those who want to go straight will have a hard time finding a legitimate job.
Why not treat these offenders differently? The Council of State Governments reports that halfway houses and nonresidential, community-based supervision programs, including day reporting centers, community service, and other work assignments, are viable alternatives to incarceration.
These alternatives also allow offenders to build work and social skills needed to avoid future run-ins with the law.
In 2003, Virginians also spent $272 million, or about $5,850 per year to supervise each of 46,500 nonincarcerated convicts. That means for every nonviolent inmate shifted from inside prison to nonprison punishment, taxpayers could save upwards of $6,580 per year. If all 28,000 nonviolent inmates were released to alternative punishments, the state could potentially save $184 million annually.
Five years ago, California started sending drug offenders to treatment programs instead of prison--and, based on a recent UCLA study, the state has saved about $173 million a year and no longer needs to build a planned new prison.
Total savings: $1.4 billion.
Maryland is cutting their prison population and saving money with a similar program.
Overcrowded, violent, and disease-filled prisons and jails are here to stay as long as the number of inmates sent to prison goes up year after year. As a society, we are quick to needlessly fill prisons with nonviolent inmates--and too slow to find alternative ways to punish and rehabilitate them.
We now need a second commission to finish the job, and publish a step-by-step road map for ending America's "unprecedented reliance on incarceration."
RONALD FRASER writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project.
