this is scary shit


URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n285/a01.html

PRISON POPULATION TO RISE BY THOUSANDS

The state's prison population will grow from a little more than 5,000 today to nearly 7,000 in 2014, according to a report released by the state's Criminal Justice Analysis Center Friday.

The center predicts prison growth will be sparked by the increased imprisonment of thieves, drug users and other non-violent offenders.

"While the growth in the correctional population is forecasted to be less than what was observed in the 1990s, the current projections imply that public officials and correctional administrators should plan for a larger correctional population in the future," wrote the report's authors, center director Stephen Hass and Theresa Lester.

The report comes as Gov. Joe Manchin and other state leaders are trying to grapple with the costs of a decade of explosive prison growth. In the last 10 years, the state has doubled prison spending to $103 million as the number of inmates ballooned from 2,325 in 1994 to 5,067 in 2004.

Earlier this week, the state Council of Churches, the Appalachian Institute of Wheeling Jesuit University and Grassroots Leadership of Charlotte, N.C., called on the state to freeze prison spending and take steps to stem the growth of its prison population.

If the prison population continues to grow, "it will be an enormous drag on the budget," said Jill Kriesky of the Appalachian Institute.

West Virginia's prison population remains small when compared to the rest of the country. Its incarceration rate of 260 inmates per 100,000 people was 41st in the nation.

But in the last decade, the state is expanding its prison population by an average of 8.3 percent a year. Only North Dakota and Oregon have been expanding their prisons at a faster rate.

More and more prisoners are nonviolent offenders convicted of things such as burglary, drug crimes and property offenses, according to the report.

And they are staying longer. While violent offenders have seen their average sentence drop in the last five years, the report said nonviolent offenders have watched the average sentence for property and drug crimes go up.

About 85 percent of West Virginia's prisoners are white. About 14 percent of the prisoners are black, a disproportionately large group in a state where about 3 percent of all residents are black, the report said.

The report predicts little will change in the next decade.

The prison population will go up, albeit at a slower average annual rate of about 4 percent. Judges will continue to send more nonviolent offenders to prison than they did the year before.

The report's authors did not say if their estimates for prison growth would change if the state began funding more programs that allow judges to put people in community corrections programs instead of prison.

Advocacy groups like the state Council of Churches say that the state could reduce its prison population by expanding community corrections programs and paroling more inmates.

Manchin has proposed expanding the state's community corrections program. It is in place in the state's Northern Panhandle, Logan County and Mercer County.


URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n267/a05.html

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