Pubdate: Sun, 05 Jan 2003 Source: Sun Herald (MS) Copyright: 2003, The Sun Herald Contact: http://www.sunherald.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/432 Author: Neal Peirce HOW MANY (EX-)PRISONERS IS A RECESSION WORTH? Utah considers freeing 400 convicted felons by March 1. California inches toward early release of nonviolent and elderly prisoners. States begin to lay off prison guards. Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton endures political brickbats for providing early release to 567 nonviolent prison inmates. Everywhere, the reason is clear. States must balance their budgets. They face the worst fiscal crises of a half-century or more. It costs $20,000 to $25,000 a year just to hold one prisoner. So after three decades of tough "law and order" penal policy, the temptation is growing to change course and release some of the 2 million prisoners incarcerated in the United States. But will the criminal justice establishment - and the media - allow us a clear-headed debate about the choices states face? I'm not hopeful. The knee-jerk reaction is to suggest we'll have soaring crime rates soon after the first criminal gets early release. An example: Ogden, Utah, Police Lt. Dave Tarran recently told The Deseret News that early releases would constitute "our worst possible nightmare." Don't "seek to remedy budgetary woes by endangering the safety of our communities," warns Lawrence Brown, director of the California District Attorneys Association. A New York Times story emphasizes how the state of Kentucky's early releases include men convicted of burglary, theft, arson and drug possession, "some of them chronic criminals." What the report doesn't note is that the average sentence of the Kentucky convicts was for only three years and that the inmates were released, on average, only 80 days early. The Times also reports some states "have gone so far" as to repeal mandatory sentences - as if such rigid penalties, enacted at the height of the country's "lock-'em-up" extremism, aren't decried by many lawyers, judges included. Sadly, we're being presented with a false choice. Either, goes the message, we can pack our prisons and have "safe" communities. Or, we can reduce incarceration and live in fear. There's a sliver of truth in the choice: Surely we want incorrigible, violent offenders incarcerated as long as can be. But most prisoners aren't incorrigible, and most will be released one day anyway. For them, it's fair to ask: Was prison the right place to be sent in the first place - especially the huge numbers of nonviolent offenders, including those held for minor drug-dealing or drug-possession offenses? And will prison correct, or actually exacerbate, some of the other prime reasons for crime: joblessness and poverty, splintered families, mental instability, peer pressure from gangs? Might it be that substance abuse treatment, community service, restitution, intense (and adequately staffed) probation tied to local community policing, could do better? The public is way ahead of the politicians on alternatives to incarceration, argues Marc Mauer of the Washington-based Sentencing Project (and editor of the recent book: "Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment"). Crime has not only dropped since the early '90s, Mauer argues - the public is less fearful. Drug courts - based on the premise that treatment will serve addicted people better than a jail cell - have spread to 400 locations nationally, and are well accepted. But there are disturbing problems. One is the prison industry: many small towns embraced prisons as a job generator - even though the locations are sometimes hundreds of miles from prisoners' homes and their families. Now prison town legislators are fans of incarceration. In California, Gov. Gray Davis has been reluctant to call for prison reduction - because, say some, he received what The Associated Press calls "lavish" prison guard union gifts to his re-election campaign. Then there's race. Vast majorities of inmates are now blacks and Hispanics - - even though their use of illegal drugs is no more than that of whites. In big cities, up to 75 percent of black men can expect to be incarcerated during their lifetimes. They get sent to distant state penitentiaries where they can only call home by exorbitantly expensive collect calls (an area rife with kickback fees for prison operators). In the Trent Lott affair, George Bush spoke out for racial accord. But what happened when Congress last year considered a bill to start equalizing penalties for powder cocaine possession and crack cocaine? Currently penalties are 100 times as high for possessing crack cocaine, which thrives in the inner cities. There may be no more blatantly racist element in federal law. But Bush's operatives put the kibosh on any reform. The prison conundrum, in short, is deeply ingrained into today's American way of life. It's part of our enduring racism. We talk an equity game but actually have preferred a sort of blind vengeance. The ray of hope now is that the fearsome budget crisis of '03 will oblige us to rethink incarcerating some of the 2 million we now hold. Two million is 500 percent more than the early '70s. How many do we really need to imprison for our safety? Couldn't economy and security - and American ideals - coincide for once? - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens