Pubdate: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 Source: New York Times (NY) Page: A24 Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html Copyright: 2011 The New York Times Company Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Cited: Council of State Governments Justice Center http://www.justicecenter.csg.org/ Cited: Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_detail.aspx?id=74 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) INDIANA'S ANSWER TO PRISON COSTS For states that are serious about trimming deficits, out-of-control prison costs are a good place to start cutting. The expenses of housing and caring for more than one million state prison inmates has quadrupled in the last decade from about $12 billion a year to more $52 billion a year. This, in turn, has squeezed budgets for essential programs like education. Governors seeking wisdom on how to proceed could start by looking at what Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, is trying to accomplish in Indiana. The centerpiece of Mr. Daniels's approach is a set of reforms governing sentencing and parole. Judges would be allowed to fit sentences to crimes and have the flexibility to impose shorter sentences for nonviolent offenses. A poorly structured parole system would be reorganized to focus on offenders who actually present a risk to public safety. Addicts would be given drug treatment to try to make them less likely to be rearrested. And there would be incentives for towns to handle low-level offenders instead of sending them into more costly state prisons. Mr. Daniels devoted the last year to building a wide political consensus behind these ideas, beginning with a study from the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a prison policy group that has helped several states revise their corrections strategies. In partnership with the Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project, the council discovered that Indiana's prison count had grown by 41 percent between 2000 and 2009 - an increase three times that of neighboring states. It also found that the increase had been caused not by violent criminals but by drug addicts - - who needed treatment, not jail - and by low-level, nonviolent criminals. Indiana, the study found, was punishing both groups much more severely than neighboring states. Unless current policies were changed, the study said, the state prison population would rise by another 21 percent by 2017, forcing lawmakers to come up with an estimated $1.2 billion for new prisons. Indiana could cut its inmate count significantly and save almost all of that money if it invested a modest sum - about $28 million - in the kinds of changes that Mr. Daniels has now included in his reform package. A legislative package containing these reforms has been introduced in the Indiana Legislature. If it passes, as it should, Indiana will show the nation what good things can happen when leaders apply good sense. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake