Kentucky, like so many other states, struggling with prison overcrowding
Reporting on a story familiar in many states, this local article discusses some of the consequences of Kentucky’s problems with prison overcrowding. The piece is headlined “Cramming in the inmates: With prisons full, many county jails are overflowing with felons,” and here are excerpts:
Lincoln County’s jail, like many in Kentucky, is packed beyond capacity. It has room for 72 prisoners. On a recent weekday, it held 101, about two dozen of them state inmates for whom there is no space in prisons….
Kentucky’s 16 prisons are full. The Corrections Department has built only one in the last decade, even as its inmate population nearly doubled to 22,500 because of the war on drugs and tougher penalties for other crimes. The state’s solution? Overcrowd the local jails….
If Kentucky’s elected leaders continue to ignore the problem, the state soon will spend half a billion dollars a year to incarcerate a population equivalent to the city of Frankfort. The expense is crippling the state as well as the counties, who say they aren’t sufficiently compensated. A few counties spend close to half their budgets on their jails….
Public safety also could be at risk. Jails and prisons aren’t the same thing. Jails tend to have less space and money. For state inmates — nearly all of whom will be released one day — jails offer little of the rehabilitation available in prisons, such as drug and alcohol treatment and job training, or libraries, dining halls and exercise yards.
New Gov. Steve Beshear concedes that he doesn’t have answers. Beshear spared the Corrections Department from the current round of state budget cuts, but it’s unlikely to get additional money. “I’m not sure what to do at the moment,” Beshear said. “Obviously, a great number of offenders who are in our jails and in our prisons right now are drug-related. … We all know for a fact that if there is an answer to the drug problem, it’s treatment and rehabilitation. But that costs money. And right now, we don’t have any.”…
Recent coverage of other states’ struggles with prison populations:
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see also this post, “Costs cause states to pursue prison alternatives”