Pubdate: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 Source: Des Moines Register (IA) Copyright: 2007 The Des Moines Register. Contact: http://desmoinesregister.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/123 IOWA HELPS DRIVE TREND OF HIGHER INMATE NUMBERS Iowa historically has been an island of sanity on prisons, especially when compared to states such as Texas and California. Iowa long believed that prison should be the last option. That has changed in recent decades, however, and Iowa has racked up some of the fastest prison-growth rates in the nation. In the past 20 years, the state's prison population has tripled - to 8,727 inmates as of Tuesday. At the same time, the number of convicts in community-based corrections programs has doubled, to more than 30,000. In the past decade alone, those two populations combined increased by nearly 60 percent. What explains this growth? For one, it is the "war on drugs": Iowa, like the rest of the country, has poured huge law-enforcement resources into policing illegal drugs. According to a state analysis, as of 2005, 26 percent of prison inmates were convicted of drug-related crimes, a 10-fold increase from just a decade earlier. Also, there is an increased emphasis on sex crimes: At the current growth rate, sex offenders alone could fill a 750-bed prison in short of a decade. Also, prisons have become substitute warehouses for the mentally ill. In 2005, nearly a third of prison inmates were clinically diagnosed as suffering mental illnesses. At the same time, the Iowa Legislature has steadily increased penalties, lengthened prison sentences and added to the list of sentences that require mandatory-minimum terms. The result is that the rapid growth of incoming inmates has overwhelmed the system. Even though Iowa has steadily added capacity, prisons house 1,300 more inmates than they were designed to hold. The Iowa Legislature is expected to take up the issue of prisons next session. Unfortunately what's on the agenda is not finding more resources for drug abuse or mental-health programs. Rather, lawmakers will consider whether to invest in new and expanded prisons. This much is predictable: They will be filled to overcapacity before they are opened. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake