Pubdate: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 Source: Greenville News (SC) Copyright: 2003 The Greenville News Contact: http://greenvillenews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/877 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) FEW GUARDS, BIG TROUBLE Overcrowded, poorly funded prisons need reforms to operate safely and within the state's limited means. The results of a new survey should shock no one: South Carolina has the highest vacancy rate for prison guards and the most attempted escapes among 16 Southern states. The state's 627 assaults on guards over the past year also ranks fourth among the 16. South Carolina prisons are less sound and less safe because funding cuts have reduced the ability of the system to work properly. Already running on a $40 million deficit, the state Department of Corrections is suffering from $51 million in budget cuts over three budget cycles that have forced drastic program cuts and the layoff of hundreds of employees, including guards. The result: Inmates are more frequently idle and less supervised. These cuts come at a time the prison population has swelled by more than one-third. According to the survey by the Southern Legislative Conference, in the decade between 1993 and 2003 the inmate population in this state has increased 34.6 percent. But things are about to get much worse without either the funding to build more prisons and hire more personnel, or reforms to reduce the prison population to more fiscally manageable levels. Truth-in-sentencing laws are mainly to blame for projections that estimate the state's prison population will grow another 32 percent by 2008. The effect of those laws will be felt beginning in 2007, when they begin keeping inmates historically eligible for release in prison. The bill due will be staggering. In September, Corrections director Jon Ozmint told a state Senate task force looking into prison reforms that growing the inmate population by one-third would obligate the state to spend $327 million in prison construction alone. The prison system is already about 1,000 inmates over capacity. The Legislature must produce some comprehensive reforms for prisons beginning in the upcoming session. The current level of funding cannot house, feed, clothe, educate, medically treat and rehabilitate the inmates under state authority. Furthermore, the state must do more to protect prison staffers. Corrections will continue to have trouble attracting guards so long as the pay is modest and the perception is that the job's risks are escalating. To avoid the pending train wreck in the prison system, the state is going to have to adopt one of two politically unpopular strategies: either implement early release for nonviolent offenders or repeal its prison-busting truth-in-sentencing laws. Not only will these laws create overcrowding, the penal community fears these laws will remove needed incentives for inmates to behave or take rehabilitation seriously. But mostly the state simply can't afford the cost.