Pubdate: Wed, 28 Jan 2009
Source: Aurora Sentinel (CO)
Copyright: 2009 Aurora Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.aurorasentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1672
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

OVERDUE FOR PRISON, SENTENCING REFORM

Here's your chance, Colorado, to make a real and  long-lasting impact 
on reducing state spending and  government waste.

Gov. Bill Ritter yesterday released his latest proposed  budget cuts, 
a map to carving almost $1 billion out of  state services. The move 
is needed as the economy  unwinds and tax receipts diminish.

Many of the proposed cuts will be immediately painful,  especially 
those affecting higher education and social  services. Those 
reductions come at time when need will  be at its greatest.

But cutting millions from the budget by closing two  state prisons 
offers a unique opportunity.

It isn't as if closing a prison in Rifle and another in  Canon City 
will mean hundreds of dangerous criminals  are going to be let loose. 
Instead, they'll simply be  packed tighter in other prisons, making 
those  facilities more dangerous, and making the likelihood  that 
inmates are rehabilitated even less likely.

Instead, this is an opportunity for Colorado to become  more 
realistic and practical with how it handles  criminal sentencing, 
especially when it comes to  drug-related crimes.

Colorado's prison system accounts for almost 10 percent  of the 
state's annual budget, a number that has been  steadily growing for 
years. Last year, your tax dollars  were paying to keep about 24,000 
men and women behind  bars at the cost of nearly $30,000 a year each. 
Compare  that with the $6,000 or so the state spends on 
each  Colorado child to provide them with a public education.

Almost half of these men and women are imprisoned  because of drug 
habits, alcoholism, conspiracy or other  non-violent offenses. More 
to the point in Colorado  right now, those non-violent offenders who 
are being  housed in prisons mainly because of mental illness 
or  drug problems are running up huge taxpayer tabs.

Rather than shuffle these people around at great  taxpayer expense, 
it would be far cheaper in the short  run and the long run to treat 
them for the addictions  and mental illnesses that brought them into 
our expensive criminal justice system.

We're not suggesting that people don't need to be  policed and 
punished for violating laws, but study  after study shows that by 
first preventing people from  becoming mentally ill, drug addicts or 
alcoholics,  taxpayers save big by having those potential cell mates 
return to society as productive, tax-paying citizens.

The time is right for lawmakers to study how existing  inmates can be 
returned to society to be productive and  law-abiding citizens, and 
how future drug addicts and  mental patients can be rehabilitated 
instead of made  into hardened criminals at great taxpayer expense.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom