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| US inmates get early release |
| By turkishpress.com |
| Published: 04/17/2009 |
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With the recession eating away at government budgets, several US states are reconsidering tough-on-crime policies that have led to swollen jail populations and spiralling costs. Ohio is the latest state to propose early release for non-violent offenders and increasing community-based probation programs. "We're facing an historic economic downturn here and we have to do something differently," said Terry Collins, Ohio's director of corrections. "I'm a firm believer, if you do the crime, do the time. But I am also a firm believer that we're talking about low level non-violent offenders," Collins said. "They are going to come home anyway. They just might come home a few days earlier." Inmates and their rising costs are no small issue in the United States, which is the world leader in jailing its residents. A recent report by the non-partisan Pew Center on the States found that 1 in every 100 Americans is behind bars while another 1 out of 31 is on probation or parole. The country's 2.3 million inmates cost state and federal governments roughly 55 billion dollars a year and the Pew Center predicts continued prisoner growth will cost states an extra 28 billion dollars by 2011. The US experiment with "mass incarceration" has failed because the costs are simply unsustainable, said Pat Nolan, vice president of Prison Fellowship, a religious group focused on prison reform. "It hasn't made the public safer, but it makes the states broke." Kentucky has already released thousands from its state prisons -- despite a lawsuit from the state's attorney general. In Virginia Governor Tim Kaine recently proposed an early release program. New York officials are reconsidering the Rockefeller Drug Laws that served as the precursor to mandatory minimum sentences. And California's failure to build enough prisons prompted a federal court to rule earlier this year that it must release 55,000 prisoners due to overcrowding. "The policies that are being discussed now are nothing new," said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based organization advocating alternatives to prison sentences. "Many people have been calling for things like this for 20 years," he told AFP. Read more. If link has expired, check the website of the article's original news source. |
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