Prison Costs Rising Even as Crime Declines - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), August, 2000

Crime will continue to decline in the new millennium as long as the economy stays strong, but rising prison costs will hamper state budgets, predicts Robert Sigler, professor of criminal justice, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. The cost of maintaining prisons will "break" state budgets in the coming years, precipitating a return to emphasis on treatment and sentencing reform, rather than long prison sentences, he warns. "The prison population is growing fairly rapidly, and prison sentences are longer. In order to hold these extra prisoners, we build new prisons at a cost of several million dollars each, and then these facilities must be staffed and maintained."

The cost of corrections increases every year and is now the largest single expenditure for many states. "This is particularly aggravated by habitual offender statutes that lock up offenders for life. The life expectancy for the inmates is about the same as the life expectancy for a new prison, so we are locking up an increasingly larger permanent population which must be housed in more secure, and more expensive, institutions."

As a nation, Americans tend to cycle from emphasizing treatment to stressing punishment in criminal justice, Sigler explains. "When treatment is dominant, we tend to release some inmates we should keep locked up for the safety of all of us law-abiding citizens. During a punishment phase, we lock up a lot of people who should be kept at home. As we shift to treatment, the laws are changed to shorten the time people stay in prison."

Along with a return to treatment and the reduction of prison sentences, the use of "community corrections" will increase in the coming decades, he suggests. Community corrections include programs such as probation, parole, halfway houses, drug court, deferred prosecution, home detention, electronic monitoring, and the use of volunteers.