Pubdate: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 Source: Anniston Star (AL) Copyright: 2004 Consolidated Publishing Contact: http://www.annistonstar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/923 Author: Doug Pearson TURN EMPTY WAL-MARTS INTO PRISONS EDITOR'S NOTE: Doug Pearson, editor and publisher of Jasper's Daily Mountain Eagle, died last week. He was 66. The Tuscaloosa native had been at the Daily Mountain Eagle since 1980. We offer his last column, published early last month, in memoriam. The word is we need to spend $934 million Alabama tax dollars to build enough space for the current prison population which would probably translate to $2 billion by the time the final figures were in if we undertook this massive building project tomorrow. Why not spend millions less turning empty Wal-Mart stores and empty textile and industrial plants into prisons? We're not dealing with hardened killers in most cases. We're dealing with a bunch of misguided idiots who would rather make and sell illegal drugs in their kitchens as opposed to working for a living. Presently we have the fifth-highest incarceration rate in the country with some 584 out of every 100,000 people serving time. Of this number probably 450 are serving time for involvement with illegal drugs. And they are not what you could call "hardened criminals" by any stretch of the imagination. As an example, just about every family in Waler County has been touched directly or indirectly by the sale, manufacturing or possession of illegal drugs. They know that their son, daughter, brother or sister are not physical threats to society, just out for an easy buck. Regardless, that number fills the system to 188 percent of capacity. Because there is not room for them in our prisons we are now paroling nonviolent criminals and placing them under the care of parole officers. This amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist for the lawbreakers, something with which I disagree. Put them in one of the hundreds of empty buildings we have in Alabama for the duration of their sentences. Being sentenced to five years in jail and serving 10 to 12 months in many cases won't teach them that crime does not pay. Serving the sentence they received in a court of law might. Putting them in new prisons that cost $10 million plus makes absolutely no sense when you think of the needs we have in this state, which presently ranks in the top 10 in the nation in categories that are considered negative for the people and the bottom ten in all positive categories. In addition to the money we would save think how much easier it would be on the families of these felons. Like the victims of the makers and sellers of illegal drugs they, too, are victims. Reprinted with permission from the Daily Mountain Eagle. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin