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.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake