STATES CUT INMATES LOOSE TO CUT COSTS

Criminal Justice Shifts As Economy Stammers

States are granting early release to non-violent prisoners, cutting
sentences, sending drug offenders to treatment centers and revising
tough-on-crime laws in reverse of a 20-year trend.

State lawmakers haven't gone soft on crime. They're just short of cash to
pay for some of the anti-crime and anti-drug laws approved in the 1980s and
1990s.

"It's not like the liberals are taking over," says Connecticut state Rep.
Michael Lawler, a Democrat and co-chairman of House Judiciary Committee. "A
lot of this is driven by fiscal conservatives. We're shifting gears from
the philosophical to the practical point of view. At some point, you're
going to run out of money."

Connecticut's prison population has grown from 4,800 in 1982 to 19,500 in
2003. "We now spend more on our prisons than our colleges," Lawler says.

The same is true elsewhere. A record 1.2 million inmates were housed in
state prisons in 2002.

Criminal justice usually ranks just behind education and health care in
percentage of state spending. As the economic downturn left states short of
revenue to cover costs in the past two years, lawmakers cut programs,
increased taxes and borrowed heavily to balance their budgets. Criminal
justice was a frequent target for cuts or less-expensive ways of handling
criminals. As a result:

* Drug offenders increasingly are receiving treatment instead of jail time.
California put 30,469 drug offenders in treatment programs in its first
year of a voter-approved program. Arkansas, Connecticut, Colorado, Indiana,
Mississippi, Kansas, Texas, South Dakota and Washington also reduced drug
penalties.

* Mandatory-minimum sentencing laws were revised in Michigan, Missouri and
Delaware, so judges had more flexibility to determine the length of lockup
for criminals.

* Arkansas, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Washington
released prisoners ahead of their scheduled release.

More behind bars

The number of inmates in state prisons has increased dramatically over the
past three decades:

1982 0.4 million

1992 0.8 million

2002 1.2 million

Source: US Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics