by Charmaine S. Fuller

One in every one hundred people in the United States is now behind bars, according to a 2008 Pew Charitable Trust study. Victims’ groups, conservatives and prosecutors throughout the nation will probably not see a problem with this statistic and may argue that “lock ‘em up” strategies are best for public safety and will reduce serious crime. However, tough on crime strategies such as mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes, three strikes laws that incapacitate repeat offenders across the board for all crimes, and preventive detention (also referred to as high bail bonds) have not been proven to reduce serious crime. It is now high time for policymakers to take a comprehensive look at alternatives to incarceration that not only increase the successful re-entry of offenders into society but may also help to reduce prison spending over time.

Pushing for alternatives
The Pew Center’s report urges states to look at ways to use alternatives to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison and in programs where they are held accountable for their crimes. In North Carolina, where the incarceration rate grew by 2.6% last year, several alternatives are taking shape and gaining public support. Advocates such as Lao Rubert with the Carolina Justice Policy Center and Dennis Gaddy with the community-based re-entry group, Community Success Initiative, continue to fight for cheaper alternatives to incarceration programs – ones that truly retrain offenders for the workplace, that help fight substance abuse, that identify barriers to successful re-entry and that allow nonviolent offenders to maintain contact with community support groups and family members.

The Carolina Justice Policy Center, an organization that has worked to develop and support effective community-based corrections programs that can reduce the need for expensive prison beds for the last 30 years and a current RESIST grantee, continues to push for increased funding for alternative programs in North Carolina such as Sentencing Services, Drug Treatment Courts and Pre-trial Programs. These programs are essential to help participants get their lives back on track while also saving taxpayers’ dollars. It is far cheaper to pay the costs of such programs than to follow a “lock ‘em up” strategy. For example, the average daily cost in 2005 for a participant enrolled in a pre-trial program was $4.28 compared with an average daily cost of $51.25 to confine one inmate in minimum custody in North Carolina.

Times call for new solutions
In tough economic times, policymakers in every state must begin to truly address the rising prison and jail populations and the opportunity costs that result from such increases. States’ incarceration costs continue to rise as prison populations swell. Last year alone, according to the Pew report, states spent more than $49 billion on corrections, up from $11 billion 20 years before. Society must make an attempt to produce cost-savings in the criminal justice system that can be applied to other more effective programs.

While cries for increased public safety strategies should not be ignored, more prisons, longer sentences and other tough on crime “lock ‘em up” strategies are not the main solutions to crime in America. To the contrary, these tough on crime strategies may be contributing to America’s soaring incarceration rates which the Pew Center recently documented. With limited revenue sources in every state, elected officials must begin to ask themselves, “How many people can we afford to lock up each year?”

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Charmaine S. Fuller is the new executive director of the Carolina Justice Policy Center, a RESIST grantee and a policy and advocacy-based criminal justice nonprofit based in Durham, North Carolina (known formerly as the North Carolina Prison and Jail Project). For more information about criminal justice reform in North Carolina, please visit www.justicepolicycenter.org..