Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 13, 1992 TAG: 9202130543
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CRIME RATE MISLEADS BUILD FEWER PRISONS, LOCK UP FEWER PEOPLE
IN 1989, GOV. Baliles and the General Assembly authorized an emergency expenditure of $232 million for prison construction, in anticipation of inmate numbers that, so far, have not materialized.Were there not possibly better alternatives then? And what about now? Operating costs for three new prisons amount to $42 million in the new budget: increases that will, more than likely, be a yearly thing.
The rising crime rate always alluded to is not really what we think it is. According to the study by the Commission on Prison and Jail Overcrowding, in fiscal year 1988-89, 52.6 percent of inmates in Virginia prisons had been incarcerated for violent offenses.
By June 30, 1990, when the inmate population had swelled by 3,876 prisoners over the previous year, things had changed. According to the Department of Corrections Research and Evaluation Unit, 50.7 percent of the inmates had been imprisoned for non-violent offenses. That trend appears to be holding. As of June 30, 1991, 50.9 percent of inmates were there on non-violent offenses.
Certainly the drug problem is responsible for a good deal of the increase, although the Corrections documents show that more people in prison for non-violent offenses were locked up for burglary/breaking-and-entering charges than for all four categories of drugs in both 1990 and 1991.
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission found in its 1992 evaluation of the parole process that funding for prerelease treatment and residential programs was $50,000 in 1986, and has increased only to $129,000 at present. If we took the money spent to imprison just eight "average" offenders, we would more than double that budget.
Over the next two years, we're expected to come up with $74 million we don't have resources for. And this won't ever end. According to the study on overcrowding, by the year 2000 we will be spending $2.8 billion more per year just to maintain the facilities we are budgeting for right now.
Virginia is a low-crime state, yet we imprison more people longer than just about any other state. (And this is in a nation that imprisons more of its people than any other nation.)
One thing we could do is follow the president's lead and declare a moratorium on any new "criminal" laws, until we have had time to fully examine this issue and reach some kind of consensus on the types of things we still want to put people in prison for. We can't keep turning the trivial into the serious and expect the word "felony" to have any meaning.
I think prisons should be reserved for only the most serious offenses, the "universals," with public safety the prime consideration. That way, scarce and valuable program resources could really be applied toward attempting to "rehabilitate" those who had a chance of being released to the community. For some, prison might become a permanent home, but we could also work on improving that, so that "life" behind bars amounted to at least some kind of life.
In 1990, it cost $17,225, on average, to keep one state inmate locked up for a year. Five children in Montgomery County could go to school on less money than that during that same year. When you look at costs in these terms, and you realize how much the education budget has been cut to maintain things like this, the priorities of the state seem pretty clear. JEANNE B. HENLEY RADFORD