Via the AP: Lawmakers promise legislation to reduce prison overcrowding
Members of a legislative oversight committee on Thursday committed to push for legislation next year that would create more drug courts and enhance other programs aimed at reducing prison overcrowding.
But one legislator warned that such programs may be used against them by political opponents.
“They will charge that you are soft on crime,” said Sen. Pat Lindsey, D-Butler.
This is a typical response from most politicians anytime anything dealing with drugs emerges: they run for the tall grass afraid that they are going to be accused of being soft on crime and/or for making it easier for preschoolers to use heroin. Although to be fair: the Committee is debating the proposal–whether it becomes law remains to be seen, of course.
The bottom line is that the state of Alabama (and other states) are having to spend remarkable sums of money on prisons, and much of that is driven by drugs convictions.
Prisons Commissioner Richard Allen said there are currently 24,500 inmates in state facilities, including 21,500 in permanent prisons, which he said were built to hold about 10,400. Allen said about a third of those inmates were charged with drug offenses, while 75 to 80 percent had drug problems that contributed to their crimes.
Which translates into:
“If we don’t stop this thing, our budget for prisons is going to equal what we pay for education,” Rogers said.
No matter how one slices it, that is a problematic situation.
A possible solution is to treat drug problems more as ones of public health, i.e., via treatment, rather than simply something that requires punishment:
In drug court programs, defendants charged with felony drug possession or other drug related crimes undergo an intensive program of treatment and testing supervised by a judge. If the defendant remains drug free for a year, the charges are dropped.
Surely if we can get people to stop using drugs through alternate means and save the taxpayers considerable sums of money, it is worth an open debate and the creation of new policies. Yet, Lindsey is right, a lot of voters will see this as nothing more than being “soft” on drug users. Such attitudes make it difficult to have an open discussion about these issues, and impedes the formulation of efficacious public policy.
It is difficult to look at the numbers (cost, number of prisoners, and drug use stats) and say that the current policies are actually working.
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Not so sure that it would work out any better if we initiated massive treatment plans - can’t see how that would be a lot cheaper than prison, particularly if you’re treating people on an in-patient basis, which is by far the mos successful way to deal with drug addiction. Outpatient treatment, even when it’s elective and not pushed on someone by the state, has a huge failure rate.
Given that a lot of these prisoners who are in jail “for drugs” have also commited other crimes that are related to their drug habits, I’m not convinced a massive treatment plan would save any money for the state, or even take much pressure off of the prisons - unless you build a lot of in-patient treatment facilities, which would simply move people from prison to the hospital, which would, presumably, also be state run.
You have to spend money to deal with the problem no matter how you look at it.
Comment by Captain D. — Friday, August 24, 2024 @ 6:10 pm
I can’t quote numbers, but there is little doubt that treatment is cheaper than imprisonment.
We are also talking about a lot of people in prison who have otherwise done nothing other than possess a relatively small amount of drugs–not to mention the insane amounts of money spent and people imprisoned to protect society from marijuana.
There is no doubt at all that we are not getting our money’s worth out of these policies.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Friday, August 24, 2024 @ 7:46 pm