Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Reducing Prison Spending

The centerpiece of Mr. Daniels’s approach is a set of reforms governing sentencing and parole. Judges would be allowed to fit sentences to crimes and have the flexibility to impose shorter sentences for nonviolent offenses. A poorly structured parole system would be reorganized to focus on offenders who actually present a risk to public safety.

Addicts would be given drug treatment to try to make them less likely to be rearrested. And there would be incentives for towns to handle low-level offenders instead of sending them into more costly state prisons.

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Why can't Idaho and other states admit they have a problem similar to Indiana and take similar steps to reduce prison expending? More treatment will not only save money, but it will lower recidivism rates, which translates into fewer victims in the future.

But it seems that no one in the legislature or governor's office is interested in those sorts of outcomes. What is that saying about insanity?

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