It was good to see in print the other day a story on how Northwest Arkansas lawmakers generally support the idea of providing more money to a state prison system that's not getting the job done.
Specifically, most local legislators want to make sure the state makes good on money owed to county jails, which are the first non-state agencies to feel the pressure when the Arkansas Department of Correction facilities are filled to the brim with inmates. Keeping local sheriff's and quorum courts from getting mad has long been a pretty good recipe to avoid creating unnecessary barriers to political longevity.
What’s The Point?
Arkansas lawmakers need to shift funding toward state prisons and paying county jails for housing state inmates, but reforms are necessary for a state that can’t afford a cell for every law-breaker.
Arkansas prisons are in trouble. The spokeswoman for the system said recently that the state inmate head count had climbed to 18,000. That's 1,200 more than the Department of Correction was built to handle. A week or so ago, about 2,800 state inmates sat in county jails awaiting space in the state lockups.
Already spending about $320 million a year to keep criminals confined, the Department of Correction has requested another $10 million to pay its employees and $7.4 million to reimburse county jails. Then there's the $21 million to open up 2,000 new beds in the next several years.
They'll find willing lawmakers in Little Rock, as it's usually good politics to take a law-and-order stance in Arkansas.
So throw more money at it, General Assembly. We have no doubt the state prison system needs an infusion of cash. But is that all our state's handling of criminal justice really needs?
Not at all. Arkansas will never be able to afford prison and judicial approaches that attempt to lock'em up and throw away the key. Prison cells need to be available so that the worst offenders can be put away for terms that resemble the sentences judges and juries mete out. But Arkansas needs to reform its approach to handling the lesser, nonviolent offenses. And before anyone screams about being soft on crime, the real question is this: Are state taxpayers willing to pay whatever necessary to refute that canard?
We saw some hope for a modified approach last year when the Department of Community Correction told lawmakers of new plans for electronic monitoring that costs a fraction of incarceration. But the hope arising from sentencing reform adopted by lawmakers in 2011 gave way to realization the state had embraced a parole system destined for failure. The ill-prepared parole system, and the reaction to a murder alleged to have been committed by a man that system should have tossed back in prison, led to the overcrowded situation the state is in today.
Dangerous people need to be in prison, but punishment for nonviolent offenders can be accomplished by other means. From a purely fiscal perspective, the state must advance reforms that smartly use diversion programs to seek out root causes of crime and address them. Effective sentencing guidelines must be continually reviewed.
Arkansas' fight against crime has to go beyond the medieval mindset of throwing offenders in the dungeon, if for no other reason than the state's residents can't afford it.
Commentary on 03/04/2014