The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

“We really need to take a hard look at what we’re doing as a Legislature when we pass legislation that requires people to be incarcerated,” Kessler said as his committee began to chart its course for the session.
“I think it’s politically popular at times to just incarcerate people just because it makes you look tough on law and order. But at the end of the day, now, I think the public is starting to feel the effects of that, particularly at the county level, where they can’t afford to pay the regional jail fees.
“Prisons are busting at the seams, and we’re going to have to end up building a new prison at a quarter of a billion dollars or so to lock up people.”
Like others, Kessler wants to re-examine the sentencing of lawbreakers so that only the violent menaces to society are put away, not “everybody we get mad at who does something stupid and may do something harmful more to themselves many times than to society.”
“That doesn’t do anything to really keep us safer,” he said.
Kessler expects much attention to the manner in which people are committed to pulling time in prison and the crimes that send them there.
An alternative, one he favors, is the use of money and energy toward prevention of recidivism and rehabilitation of society’s miscreants.
“I think that’s probably a wiser choice of dollars,” he said.
“I’ve yet to see any studies over the last decade to indicate West Virginia has become a more violent state or a more dangerous state,” he said.
Had that been the case, he said, the prison population would be twice as large.
One area that has drawn the focus of lawmakers with regard to easing the crowded conditions in the penal system is the drunken driver.
“We’re going to be taking a look at what we can do to reduce some of the incarceration levels, rather than spend $50 a day keeping people locked up,” the chairman said.
“That money would be better spent by requiring mandatory participation in drug and alcohol treatment programs, Interlock-type programs.”
Even with this new approach, he reminded, DUI cases can still be prosecuted, but hopefully with a more positive outcome.
Kessler says it makes more sense to get the offender in a drug or alcohol treatment program, rather than merely stowing them away in a cell, only to learn at the end of the sentence the offender is addicted.
“All you’ve done is released a sober drunk,” he said. “And they’re right back to the same pattern.”
In recent years, he noted, the Legislature at times has looked into the sentencing system and fetched some meaningful data.
“But it’s like the wind goes out of the sails,” he said. “Something comes up and we pass legislation, and say, ‘we’re tough on crime again.’”
Kessler pointed to the brouhaha over the so-called “Logan’s Law,” one aimed at sexual predators and one that triggered a fight waged largely along partisan lines.
“The original version of that did nothing but double penalties for everyone across the board,” he said.
In reality, Kessler said, lawmakers should have zeroed in on early intervention with more money and time invested in protecting children from neglect and abuse, “rather than worrying about rounding up a bunch of bogeymen and throwing them in jail for the rest of their lives.”
“Statistics show there is a very, very minute subset of true and real sexual predators,” he said.
“Those folks, yes, we need to confine forever. But we don’t need to go out and build a new prison for a quarter of a billion dollars to put everybody in that may have streaked across a college campus.”
Kessler feels the new law is working in two special areas — the sexual registry and the task force in its strivings with prosecutors to prevent abuse and neglect of children.
Money could be the big motivator in reforming how West Virginia sends people to jail and prisons, he says.
After all, once the state and counties begin shopping around for new areas to tax so that offenders are kept within prisons and jails, the public could demand some change.
“Then we’ll probably see more of an outcry, ‘Hey, come to your senses, guys, we can’t afford to keep locking everybody up that may jaywalk.’
“Prisons are meant to lock up people that pose a danger to society, not necessarily people that have done stupid things or made you mad.”

http://www.register-herald.com/local/local_story_018212153.html