Economics might finally have caught up with the push by politicians to get tough on crime.
A recent report from the Pew Center on the States found that Indiana’s state prison population had grown by 41 percent from
2000 to 2008. That’s significantly higher than the 12 percent average for the nation as a whole.
And the Indiana Department of Correction estimates the prison population will grow by another 21 percent by 2017. To accommodate that growth, the department says, the state will need to add more cells at a cost of more than $1 billion.
Why is this happening? The Pew study puts the blame on hundreds of gradual changes to the criminal code and to sentencing and corrections policies over the past 34 years.
To reverse this trend, Gov. Mitch Daniels and a number of Indiana lawmakers are proposing reforms they say would create a more precise set of drug and theft sentencing laws that would give judges more options.
They propose to strengthen community supervision by focusing resources on high-risk offenders and to reduce recidivism by increasing access to community-based substance abuse and mental health treatment.
The reform package also would recommend that the state provide $27 million over the next six years to improve probation, parole and treatment programs on the county level.
The idea here is to reverse that trend toward locking people up and throwing away the key.
Such a sentiment plays well on bumper stickers, reform advocates say, but in practice, it is bankrupting the state budget. Reform advocates note that it costs about $21,000 a year to house an inmate in state prison.
Some of the penalties enacted by the legislature simply defy logic.
For example, the advisory sentence for distributing three grams of cocaine in Indiana ranges from 20 to 50 years in prison. The advisory sentence for rape is 6 years.
The reform plan would give judges more discretion over sentencing low-risk offenders to community-based programs — an option legislators have taken away in some cases.
Reform advocates also point out that Indiana has more than 6,000 inmates locked up on class D felonies, typically property crimes such as theft or forgery. They believe those beds should be freed up for violent criminals.
We agree.
This reform effort is on the right track. Lawmakers should give these measures serious consideration.