Our Opinion: Your bill for state prisons - $100,000/hour
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The shopworn philosophy of fighting crime by locking 'em up and throwing away the key is swamping Arizona taxpayers in red ink.
This fiscal year, the Department of Corrections will spend more than $817 million running state prisons.
In her budget request for fiscal 2007, which begins July 1, Gov. Janet Napolitano is seeking 12 percent more for prisons - $913.6 million. That's more than $100,000 for every hour of the year.
If this keeps up, in fiscal 2008 we'll spend more than $1 billion to lock up people. In a couple of years, we'll spend more for prisons than for the state's universities.
There are 35,779 men and women locked up in Arizona prisons. Together, they could populate a city among the state's 20 largest.
Putting people in prison isn't making us safer. Arizona ranks ninth for its incarceration rate, yet we rank 16th among states for our violent crime rate.
Clearly, something must be done. The state cannot continue locking up people and pouring millions of dollars a day into running prisons. There must be a better way.
One is being considered by the state Legislature - though it is getting a frosty reception from one hard-headed county attorney who refuses to consider reasonable alternatives to prison.
State Rep. Bill Konopnicki, a Safford Republican, is sponsoring a bill that would moderately expand early-release programs. It would allow inmates who are classified as low or medium risks to have their sentences shortened by up to six months.
There are safeguards. Anyone convicted of a violent offense against a person would not be eligible. The early release would be limited to inmates who committed nonviolent crimes. And the victims would have to agree to the early release.
Andrew Thomas, the Maricopa County attorney, already has said he is opposed to anything that lets any inmate out of prison early. He called the bill "a dangerous scheme designed to help the state avoid the cost of paying to lock up career criminals."
But Thomas fails to understand that "the state" is we the people. If we can substantially reduce prison costs without causing more risk, it's worth exploring.
Ninety-seven percent of the people now in prison will be released at some point. We need to plan for their release and their reintroduction to society.
And we need to find a way to bring rapidly spiraling prison costs under control. The money we spend to keep men and women behind bars can be spent in far more productive ways.
In education, for example, which would be a way of providing early prevention that keeps people out of criminal trouble.
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Loren W. (Jeepster)
Feb 6, 2007 @ 8:28pmYou "forgot" to mention how much the illegal aliens in Arizona's prisons are costing the taxpayers. Where are THOSE statistics? - Post a Comment »