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| Sentencing Reform in State Prisons |
| By greenvilleonline.com |
| Published: 03/12/2010 |
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State lawmakers should use sentencing reform to reduce the burden on the state Corrections Department, not early release or furloughs of prisoners who already are in the system. There is no debating that South Carolina’s prisons are overcrowded. There’s also no disputing that the Corrections Department is facing some fiscal difficulties. What state agency isn’t as the state and nation struggle to deal with monumental budget shortfalls in the face of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? But the long-term solution is not to turn prisoners loose. Even in the short term, such a furlough program would fall well short of the needed savings. According to a report in The Greenville News , Department of Corrections Director Jon Ozmint said releasing the 277 inmates that would be eligible for supervised furlough would save the state Corrections Department $314,000 per year. The department currently is facing a $30 million deficit that’s not the fault of fiscal mismanagement — for example, Corrections spends just $14,500 per year to house an inmate, among the lowest per-inmate expenditures in the nation. Between 1983 and 2008, the system’s population has risen from 9,137 to nearly 25,000. In that same span, the department’s costs have increased more than 500 percent to $394 million from $63.7 million. Read More. |
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