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. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth