GROWING INMATE POPULATION

The nation's prison and jail population rose again last year, to 2,166,260,
a record.

The increase comes at a time when crime is falling and state and local
governments are struggling to close budget deficits.

The price of imprisoning so many Americans is too high, in scarce tax
dollars and in wasted lives.

Congress and state legislatures should find ways to reduce the number of
people behind bars. The population of federal and state prisons and local
jails grew 2.6 percent last year, according to new Justice Department data.
Since 1995, it has risen nearly 30 percent.

By the end of last year, the proportion of U.S. residents who were behind
bars was a staggering 1 in 143. The nation's incarceration rate is among
the world's highest, five to 10 times as high as in many other
industrialized nations.

Federal, state and local governments have been putting more people behind
bars even though crime, including violent crime, is down sharply.

The driving force has been an array of get-tough policies, many adopted in
another era, when fear of crime was greater.

In New York, the prisons are filled with nonviolent drug offenders,
convicted under the draconian Rockefeller drug laws. In California, and
other states with "three strikes and you're out" laws, prisoners are being
given long sentences for relatively minor offenses.

One Californian, whose sentence was upheld this year by the Supreme Court,
received 25 years to life for shoplifting three golf clubs.

Getting tough on crime has long been an easy way to impress voters.

But with government strapped for money, it makes no sense to spend an
average of $22,000 a year to keep people behind bars who do not need to be
there. Small-time criminals can be deterred by shorter sentences and kept
from moving on to larger crimes by alternative sentencing. Minor drug
offenders would be better served, at far less expense, by drug treatment.

And special attention should be given to releasing older inmates, a
fast-growing part of the prisoner population.

Congress and state legislatures should build more discretion into
sentencing and look for ways to release prisoners who are no longer a
threat to society.

Locking the door and throwing away the key may make for good campaign sound
bites, but it is a costly and inhumane crime policy.