"The Prison Burden". YEP!

The prison burden

There's nothing like a fiscal crisis to get lawmakers thinking more about what government can no longer afford — and, wherever applicable or possible, to actually do something about it.

An excellent case in point is Kentucky's practice of incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders — to such an extent that they now account for 25 percent of the state's prison population. Even in better economic times, it's hard to justify spending $21,700 annually to incarcerate each of these people rather than increase the state's investment in substance-abuse treatment programs and anti-recidivism efforts. By all means, reserve harsh punishments for high-level drug dealers, but make more extensive use of probation, parole and electronic monitoring for addicts and other low-risk offenders.

These are among the cost-saving recommendations in the interim report of a high-level taskforce of state officials working with the Pew Center on the States, a nonprofit organization with broad experience in helping legislators to think critically about what's working and not working in their criminal justice systems.

Most of the recommendations aren't new, of course, but the urgency now is that if Kentucky fails to revise its drug laws, its prison population could increase by as many as 1,400 inmates at an additional cost of $161 million, the report said.

That's unsustainable growth and an unacceptable burden for taxpayers. There's no sane reason why Kentucky's prison population should have grown by 45 percent, as it has in the last decade, compared with the average 13 percent growth in state prison systems nationally. When the General Assembly reconvenes Feb. 1, lawmakers should take seriously this new report and its recommendations — and at last come up with drug laws that are designed to protect the public safety, but to do so in rational and cost-effective ways.