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Last week, Gov. Roy Romer signed a bill that reduces the prison sentences for some crimes. This was not done in the interest of abstract justice, such as making the punishment fit the crime, but in the interest of economy.
By adjusting sentences, the state will avoid building 700 prison beds, which means fewer inmates and less spending. In 1988, it cost $39,028 to keep a prisoner behind Colorado bars for a year (as compared to the $4,809 spent on the average Colorado student in 1991), and so eliminating 700 beds means an annual saving of $27 million.
There are some, such as state Sen. Bill Owens, who would argue that this is false economy -- that criminals outside of prison cost society far more than the $39,028 a year it costs to keep them in prison.
Perhaps that depends on the crimes committed by the criminal. In 1970, the United States had 196,492 people in prison -- an incarceration rate of 96.7 per 100,000. In 1990, American prisons held 738,894 people for an incarceration rate of 294.5 per 100,000 -- a 300 percent increase.
This might make one believe that violent crime also increased 300 percent during those 20 years, but it didn't. In 1970, there were 361 violent crimes reported per 100,000; in 1990, it was 732, for a 202 percent increase.
So, we have the incarceration rate growing much faster than the violent crime rate. While this indicates that incarceration doesn't appear to reduce crime, it also makes you wonder where we're finding all those inmates -- there just isn't enough increase in violent crime to account for the growth in prison population.
The inmates result from non-violent crime, mostly drug offenses. In 1960, one in every 25 state prisoners was a drug offender; now, one in every three new state prisoners is a drug offender.
According to a recent Newsweek: The number of adults
in state and federal prisons on drug more than tripled
between 1986 and 1991 . . . Much of the population
explosion is due to mandatory minimum sentences imposed by
Congress in 1987 for even the smallest federal drug
violations; many states have imposed mandatory minimums as
well.
On average nationally, prison for each drug offender costs about $35,000 a year. Perhaps the $9 billion a year would be worth it if it insured that everyone who wanted chemical ecstasy got a legitimate Prozac prescription.
But we know that's not happening, and there's another consequence of this rush to imprison drug offenders. Prisons release violent criminals early to make room for drug offenders.
There is no statutory requirement that murderers and
rapists be kept in the clink,
explained Daniel Polsby,
a law professor at Northwestern, but there is a
requirement that druggies be kept in.
Or, as a friend who used to work at the Buena Vista
Correctional Facility once told me, The place is
overcrowded, a powder keg waiting to explode. The more
docile our population, the better off we are. So of course
we release the violent ones as quickly as we can. The
druggies are fairly easy to manage -- we don't mind keeping
them.
So the next time you hear a politician promising stiff
mandatory sentences for drug offenses, he's really saying
I propose to raise your taxes while putting violent
criminals back on the street.
He wouldn't get elected if he said that, of course, so instead he promotes the War on Drugs. If he's curious, he might wonder why violent crime rates keep rising despite all the money being spent on prisons.
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