Pubdate: Mon, 28 Jul 2003
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Page: A2
Copyright: 2003 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Curt Anderson, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

PRISON POPULATIONS, COSTS CLIMBING

$40b a Year Spent on Inmates Despite Falling Crime Rate

WASHINGTON -- America's prison population grew again in 2002 despite a
declining crime rate, costing the federal government and states an
estimated $40 billion a year at a time of rampant budget shortfalls.

The inmate population in 2002 of more than 2.1 million represented a
2.6 percent increase over 2001, according to a report released
yesterday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Preliminary FBI
statistics showed a 0.2 percent drop in overall crime during the same
span.

Specialists say mandatory sentences, especially for nonviolent drug
offenders, are a major reason that inmate populations have risen for
30 years. About one of every 143 US residents was in federal, state,
or local custody at year's end.

"The nation needs to break the chains of our addiction to prison and
find less costly and more effective policies, like treatment," said
Will Harrell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union
of Texas. "We need to break the cycle."

Others say tough sentencing regulations, such as the "three strikes"
laws that can put repeat offenders behind bars for life, are a chief
reason for the drop in crime.

This year, the Justice Department ordered Bureau of Prisons officials
to stop sending so many white-collar and nonviolent criminals to
halfway houses.

"The prospect of prison, more than any other sanction, is feared by
white-collar criminals and has a powerful deterrent effect," Deputy
Attorney General Larry Thompson said in a memo announcing the change.

The cost of housing, feeding, and caring for a prison inmate is about
$20,000 per year, or about $40 billion nationwide using 2002 figures,
according to The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that
promotes alternatives to prison. Construction costs are about $100,000
per cell.

Even as these costs keep climbing, the federal government is tackling
a giant budget deficit and 31 states this year are cutting spending,
most often across all programs, to deal with shortfalls, according to
the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"The prison population and budget figures, taken together, should be
setting off alarm bells in state Capitols," said Jason Zeidenberg,
director of policy and research for the Justice Policy Institute, a
nonprofit organization focused on ending the reliance on
incarceration.

Drug offenders now make up more than half of all federal prisoners.
The federal penal system, which has tough sentencing policies for drug
offenses, is the nation's largest, at more than 151,600 inmates, an
increase of 4.2 percent compared with 2001.

Over the same period, state prison and jail populations grew 2.4
percent. Prison alternative advocates credit moves in some states to
divert drug offenders to treatment programs and other innovations for
that lower growth rate.

Texas recently passed a drug treatment-alternative law and saw its
prison population remain virtually unchanged from 2001 to 2002. Ohio,
which revised sentencing and parole guidelines in the late 1990s, saw
its prison and jail population rise 0.8 percent last year, compared
with 1.9 percent for Midwestern states on average.

"The way to reduce prison spending is to reduce the number of people
in prison and the number of prisons, like some states across the
country have done," said Rose Braz, director of Critical Resistance,
a California-based group opposed to prison expansion.

The Justice Department report also found that 17 states reported
increases of at least 5 percent year to year in their prison
populations, with Maine's increasing 11.5 percent and Rhode Island's
8.6 percent. Federal prisons and almost all state corrections systems
are over capacity, with 71,000 offenders serving their state or
federal sentences in local jails.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake