Economics driving prison reform in Mississippi

This local Mississippi editorial, entitled “Prisons: Crowding costly, counterproductive,” provides yet another example of how correction costs leads to unexpected advocates of reduced imprisonment terms.  Here are excerpts:

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee, composed of representatives and senators, began two weeks of hearings Monday to receive budget requests from state agencies; topping the list was the corrections commissioner with an unusual request.  Rather than asking for more, as it the usual request of lawmakers, he asked for less: inmates, that is.

Commissioner Chris Epps, indeed, asked for $20 million more in funding over last year (to $348 million in the fiscal year that begins next July), but begged lawmakers to change the state’s sentencing guidelines so fewer people will be incarcerated.  More nonviolent inmates should be on house arrest or eligible for parole to cut rising costs, Epps said, noting that more than 50,000 people are in prison or on parole and under his supervision.  He predicts a 4.5 percent prison population increase in the next year. That means even more expenses.

Epps is already under fire for a rash of violence at the 1,000-bed maximum security Unit 32 at the penitentiary at Parchman, which is the target of a class-action lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.  The biggest problem isn’t the hardened criminals, but the numbers of inmates.

The culprit is the “lock-’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key” mentality that produced Mississippi’s “85 percent rule” in 1995 that mandates stiff terms for even small offenses. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: Take people who have committed minor crimes and treat them like career criminals and they become career criminals. And it sustains itself, creating ever more grist for growth: Now, we have private prisons and work centers all over the state.

It’s “big business.” We have three state prisons, six private prisons, 11 regional facilities, 17 work centers, and three restitution centers, not to mention 82 counties with jail cells — adding 6,000 beds and more contemplated.  We spend more per inmate in state dollars for prisons than we do per student in public education. Some 67 percent of those in prisons are non-violent offenders.

As the number of inmates grows, 22,000 now, up from 10,699 in 1994, the prison budget continues to grow. In 1976, the total prison budget was $23 million. In 1994, it was $45 million. The budget Epps is requesting for fiscal 2008 is more than 15 times that of 30 years ago!