Budget Shortfall? Stop Expanding Prisons

With the 2009 state legislative sessions around the corner, lawmakers across the country will soon be seeing the usual complement of "tough on crime" bills. The public still seems to want to lock em up - if liberal California is any indication. While much-discussed Proposition 8 passed with 52.3% of the vote, the less-visible Proposition 5, which would have reformed parole and provided more treatment options and alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders, was crushed with almost 60% of voters casting their votes to keep their neighbors behind bars.

Jeremy Alford writes this week on the New Orleans Gambit Weekly that while Louisiana legislators will be scrambling to cut corners in 2009, they probably won't be looking for savings through fewer prison inmates or more sensible alternatives to incarceration. In fact, Gov. Bobby Jindal will likely introduce legislation to keep sex offenders locked up in civil commitment programs after their sentences run out. Aside from widespread objections to this unconstitutional punishment, indefinite incarceration also costs money. But even the budget crunch may not break the 'tough on crime' paradigm.

It's going to be a soul-searching session for lawmakers, who no doubt will see the usual dozen or so bills creating new laws and enhancing sentences. Chief among them will probably be a Jindal-touted bill to force violent sex offenders to be confined in special treatment centers after their regular prison terms end. Already this idea is shaping up as a perfect way for lawmakers to appear tough on crime. So-called civil commitment programs have experienced problems in the 19 or so other states where they have been adopted, but it's unlikely that Louisiana lawmakers will want to grill Jindal's handlers about that. Who wants to look like they're going easy on perverts and child molesters?

Lawmakers can either look at our thousands of prisons (and programs like civil commitment) as a drain on resources and a waste of human potential, or they can see them as valuable job-creating infrastructure. Building infrastructure like roads and bridges creates an infusion of cash and jobs with a definite social benefit - better roads and bridges. Building prisons, on the other hand, is an infrastructure investment that will continue to drain the budget year after year as thousands of prisoners (many of them nonviolent) sit behind bars. Many of these prisoners could be productive members of society, and they could be home with their families, raising kids and putting food on the table in tough times.

In Virginia, Gov. Tim Kaine has proposed to save $5 million by 2010 by releasing 1,000 inmates 90 days early.

“The rate of growth in the state’s budget for incarceration [now over $1 billion annually] has dramatically outpaced other spending items over the past decade,” Kaine said Wednesday in detailing his plans to deal with a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall.

“At a time of economic crisis, lawmakers should rethink costly policies, like prison expansion, that divert resources from education, health care and child services,” he said.

Meanwhile, back in California, federal courts are threatening to force the state to release inmates to relieve overcrowding that infringes the rights of prisoners to health care. The state is in the worst budget crisis in decades. What do the lawmakers want to do? Build more prisons, of course.