MAKE SENTENCE FIT CRIME, END OVERCROWDING

Alternative sentencing is not a free ride for drug offenders.

Pennsylvania legislators and corrections officials need to get serious about our overcrowded prisons.

This very dangerous problem puts guards and the public at risk and can no longer be kept on the back burner, especially when viable solutions have been languishing in the state Legislature for several years.  It's time for our elected officials to support an alternative sentencing bill that will help alleviate prison overpopulation, save money and enhance public safety by reducing the chances that offenders will commit another crime.  Introduced by Sen.  Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, the alternative sentencing bill would allow judges to sentence hundreds of nonviolent criminals to drug or alcohol treatment programs instead of mandatory prison terms.  Alternative sentencing is not a free ride for drug offenders.  Under the proposal, prosecutors must first request that non-violent offenders be evaluated for treatment.  Those approved by a judge would undergo 15 to 24 months of rehabilitation, including six months in prison followed by participation in a community-based treatment program and then an outpatient program.  Inmates who fail or are expelled can be sent to jail for their maximum sentence.  Aggressively treating non-violent drug abusers will cost far less than sending them to jail for five-year mandatory sentences.

Experts predict that, even after subtracting the cost of treatment, state taxpayers would save as much as $40 million each year.  Currently, the state pays more than $28,000 a year to house each of its nearly 41,000 prisoners.  Concerned about public safety, state Rep.  Phyllis Mundy recently threatened to take action if any more than 2,100 prisoners are housed at the State Correctional Facility at Dallas in Jackson Township, where the population continues to rise.  What's frightening is that the number the Department of Corrections is now "comfortable with," 2,100 inmates, is already more than one and a half times the prison's capacity.

Matters are worse at Luzerne County Correctional Facility, which is bursting at the seems with more than twice the number of inmates for which it was designed.  Wisely, our county commissioners are exploring similar ways to get non-violent drug offenders out of lock-up and into long-term treatment programs where they stand a chance at getting clean - and consequently becoming less likely to re-offend.

Prison populations ballooned after a decade or so of vote-hungry politicians enacting "tough on crime" mandatory minimum sentences, thereby tying the hands of judges and prosecutors who now have no flexibility in dealing with non-violent criminals.  The result is more prisons, more overcrowding and a $1.4 billion corrections budget, an increase of 68 percent over the last decade.  This is a trend that can't continue.

The alternative sentencing bill is strongly backed by state Secretary of Corrections Jeffrey Beard, a career corrections official who has run the state prison system since 2001.  His voice should be heeded.  It's time to stop spending billions of dollars to cram thousands of non-violent inmates into our severely overpopulated prisons.