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| Recession prompts smarter corrections |
| By gwcommonwealth.com |
| Published: 12/22/2009 |
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Recessions, as we’ve said before, can force government institutions to do those things they should have been doing anyway before the hard times hit. Such is the case with corrections. For more than a decade, lawmakers throughout the country had been told that the growth of the inmate population was untenable. Prison construction couldn’t keep up during the 1990s with the trend to send more offenders to prison and keep them there longer. And yet, the states were slow to backtrack on the so-called “truth-in-sentencing” laws and to aggressively implement alternatives to incarceration. Severely strapped budgets, though, have caused most states to back away from a one-dimensional approach that has given this nation the highest incarceration rate in the world. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the population of inmates in state and federal facilities grew last year by only 0.8 percent — the smallest annual growth this decade and far below the 1990s average pace of 6.5 percent. It’s possible that in 2010, the United States could actually see its inmate population drop for the first time since 1972. Mississippi is a perfect example of what states are doing. After enacting the toughest “truth-in-sentencing” law in the nation in 1995, Mississippi lawmakers have slowly been relaxing its terms to a more reasonable level for less dangerous lawbreakers, such as those convicted of non-violent offenses. The state has also gotten more creative with sentencing, using alternatives such as house arrest or drug court that are not only less expensive but potentially more effective in rehabilitating the offenders, many of whom resort to crime to feed a drug addiction. These changes don’t come without some backlash, of course. Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps has taken criticism, for instance, from some prosecutors for advocating the early release of nonviolent inmates as a way to deal with budget cuts. Read More. |
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