Pubdate: Tue, 15 Feb 2005
Source: Charleston Gazette (WV)
Copyright: 2005 Charleston Gazette
Contact:  http://www.wvgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/77
Note: Source rarely prints LTEs received from outside its circulation area
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

LOCK 'EM UP

West Virginia Upsurge

ASK yourself: Did West Virginians abruptly become more criminal in the past 
decade? Of course not. Mountain State people always have had a low crime 
rate, indicating innate decency.

Then why did the number of West Virginians locked in state cells more than 
double, from 2,392 to 5,032? Why did the state's incarceration growth rate 
hit 9.3 percent in 2001, the highest in America?

Why did West Virginia spend more than $100 million on new prisons in the 
past decade? Why did the Corrections Division budget soar 140 percent from 
1992 to 2002, in inflation-adjusted dollars, while higher education 
spending rose only 23 percent?

All these figures -- from a new report by the state Council of Churches and 
other humanitarian groups -- imply that the "lock 'em up" mentality has 
risen sharply in West Virginia in recent years.

Worsening spread of illegal drugs undoubtedly is a factor in the prison 
boom. But something more -- a hardening of the punitive mindset -- probably 
is causing the state to pour millions of taxpayer dollars into steel cages.

We've always advocated more probation, more work-release, more home 
confinement -- alternative sentences that let defendants work as 
self-supporting people, instead of being locked in crime-breeding 
stockades, at enormous public cost.

The new church report confirms the wisdom of that approach.
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MAP posted-by: Beth