“Lock ’em up and throw away the key” too costly for many states

Apparently “lock ’em up and throw away the key” isn’t working for many state’s bottom lines:

When Harry Coates campaigned for the Oklahoma state Senate in 2002, he had one approach to crime: “Lock ’em up and throw away the key.”

Now, Coates is looking for that key. He and other tough-on-crime lawmakers across the country, faced with steep budget shortfalls, are searching anxiously for ways to let inmates out of prison faster and keep more offenders on the street.

Oklahoma’s preferred answer for crime has collided head-on with a budget deficit estimated at $600 million, and prison costs that have increased more than 30 percent in the last decade. For years, lawmakers have pushed each other to lengthen prison sentences and increase the number of criminals behind bars. Not now: This week, new Republican Speaker of the House Kris Steele is expected to unveil a package of proposals that would divert thousands of nonviolent lawbreakers from the prison system and ramp up paroles.

Similar crash prison reductions are going on from coast to coast. Michigan has shuttered 20 correctional facilities and slashed spending by nearly 7 percent. South Carolina expects to reduce its inmate numbers by 8 percent by putting drug dealers, burglars and hot check writers into community programs instead of behind bars. Nationwide, the number of state inmates actually decreased last year for the first time in nearly 40 years.

As I’ve written before, I’ve been no fan of the early release provisions contained within Wisconsin Act 28, but at the same time I think Wisconsin’s truth in sentencing laws as they existed prior to Act 28 could have used some tweaking to allow nonviolent offenders with good institution conduct records to earn some time off their prison sentences – time which could then be added on to their periods of extended supervision.