Prisoners We Can't Pay For

Everyone knows the economy is on the skids.

Wall Street certainly feels it. Corporations continue to cut jobs. Mom and Pop businesses struggle to stay open. And state and local governments are faced with the cold hard reality that there's just not enough money to go around.

Here's the really scary part. Among the budget-cutting targets are those used to run America's jails and penitentiaries. The situation leaves policymakers little choice but to let some people currently in prison out of prison before they've served their sentences.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has found crime and justice problems in real life are much more difficult to solve than in the movies. With his state staring at a $42 billion deficit, Schwarzenegger wants to grant early release to what he calls "petty criminals" -- some 15,000 of them over the next year or so. Also, the Governator wants to eliminate parole for all offenders not convicted of violent or sex-related crimes. Schwarzenegger figures that would cut parole costs for about 70,000 ex-cons. Never mind that they would be back on the street with little or no supervision.

This type of scenario is under consideration or already in the works in several other states.

Virginia's governor wants to grant early release to about a thousand inmates. The governor of New York wants 1,600 inmates to get out early and he's called for revamping strict 1960s-era drug laws to ease the number of people who get locked up in the future. In Kentucky, even some murderers and other violent offenders are among the nearly 2,000 prisoners getting out early.

Naturally, any budget that reaches into the billions is going to be a prime target for possible spending cuts. And here in America we spend about $60 billion each year to manage the criminals we lock up.

But whoa, Nellie! Can we stop and think about this for a minute?

Is it really a good idea to let loose criminals without a supportive parole or rehabilitation system? We're already a society struggling not to sink into a full-blown depression and the crime rate is already up in some important categories. Is this really the time to put thousands more unemployed people on the street, ex-cons who may return to crime if they can't find work? And they will certainly further strain our already overloaded unemployment system.

Let's speak in general terms since not everyone in prison is a hardened career criminal. Generally speaking, these people are not like you and me. They often lack empathy and don't care about the pain their actions inflict on others. They don't see that working for a living is an honorable thing. Getting an education is often not of interest to them. They exist unable to control their own emotions, stealing what isn't theirs as if they were entitled. They take drugs, other citizens' possessions, children's innocence and sometimes they take people's lives.

Thomas Sneddon currently heads the National District Attorneys Association and was in the prosecutorial trenches for decades as the DA in Santa Barbara, Calif. He cautions us to put it all in perspective.

The prisoner who gets out early today, he says, "may be a lot more dangerous to the public than their one charge indicates." As a defendant, he or she may have pleaded to the lesser of a half-dozen serious charges, and rewarding them with early release sends the wrong message.

Sneddon believes there are some prisoners who could be released safely into the population, "but not the wholesale way that's being discussed now." And he makes a dire prediction about his home state's governor's early release plan.

"They'll re-offend. They won't take this as the gift it is. If you release 15,000 of them in California I'll bet 10,000 of them will be back in lock up within two years." It's a terrible cycle of wasted lives and wasted taxpayer money.

I was glad to read this quote from Michael Thompson, the director of The Council of State Governments Justice Center, a group that is working hard to figure out ways to curb prison populations while keeping the public safe: "There's an unprecedented level of interest in this kind of thinking,'' Thompson said. "It's a combination of fiscal pressure and a certain fatigue of doing the same thing as 20 years ago and getting the same return.''

And that's the rub, isn't it? The number of incarcerated people in America keeps going up every year, costing us more and more money. And when they get out of prison many of them are still drains on society.

There's got to be a better way. I wish someone would figure it out -- and soon.

To find out more about Diane Dimond and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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