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| States Question 'Supermax' Prisons |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 11/10/2003 |
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Fourteen years ago, Maryland opened its ultramodern Supermax prison, a high-tech fortress to hold the "worst of the worst." In contrast, a few blocks away stood the Maryland Penitentiary, a dark, gothic, castle-like structure built nearly 200 years ago when inmates were supposed to contemplate their sins in solitude and disgrace. But when Mary Ann Saar, Maryland's secretary of public safety and correctional services, recently described a Maryland institution as so out of step with modern correctional philosophy that it ought to be razed, she was talking about Supermax. That kind of talk represents a dramatic change in thinking among corrections officials across the country. Squeezed by shrinking budgets and burgeoning numbers of inmates, states are moving away from the lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key attitude of the 1980s and '90s and focusing more on drug and alcohol treatment, education and job training. In 2003 alone, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, Kansas earmarked $6.6 million to increase inmate counseling and rehabilitation, and seven states, including Texas, Louisiana and Oregon, reduced sentences and repealed mandatory minimum terms passed in the 1980s and '90s. Also, Michigan and at least five other states launched drug courts as an alternative to locking up nonviolent drug offenders. Five states repealed parole regulations deemed overly harsh. And seven states expanded programs to help ex-convicts adjust to life on the outside. As states abolished parole, lengthened prison terms and established mandatory sentences, the national inmate population reached a record 1.2 million during the 1990s and state spending on corrections doubled. Elected officials did not seem to mind during the economic boom of the late 1990s, but states next year are expected to face combined deficits of more than $78.4 billion. Twenty-two states have inmates detained at the super-maximum security level, according to the National Institute of Corrections. A dozen of those states built Supermax prisons in the 1990s, including a federal Supermax in Denver and institutions in Ohio and Illinois. Officials said each of those institutions - younger than Maryland's It costs the state an average of $23,000 a year to keep someone behind bars at one of its 30 other institutions. At Supermax, it costs nearly twice as much. Officials said the challenge may be to convince the public that states can spend money on rehabilitation and still be tough on crime. |
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