Prison numbers burden population

2/17/08
The numbers ought to be shocking.
Connecticut’s prison population keeps growing, and all our lawmakers are doing is thinking up new ways to lock people up. The cost of keeping people in prison continues to rise, but all we hear from Hartford is how we need to hire more people and pay them more money to keep people locked away.
From 1985 to the present, Connecticut’s prison population rose from 5,422 to 19,875, and could go over 25,000 in a few years. As critics have pointed out, it costs more to keep someone locked in prison than to send that person to college. This is a product of misplaced priorities.
The desire to keep people safe is natural, and is expected from our elected leaders. But the state isn’t just locking away violent offenders. Many of the people clogging up the prison system are nonviolent drug offenders who got caught up in that business because their environments offered literally no other economic opportunities. Instead of working to improve the chances of our most disadvantaged citizens, we take the easy way out, and lock them away as long as possible.
The scourge of mandatory minimums rose from fear over drug violence, and has led to thousands of people doing time when what they really needed was either medical help or a real chance in life. By hiding the problem away in prison, the state created a façade of increased safety, but in fact helped inner cities degenerate and dissolved families.
Then there is the fact that hundreds of people who had been served by state mental facilities were basically put out in the streets when those facilities closed due to budget cuts. Instead of the care and attention they needed, the most vulnerable in society were put in prison, where no one would get harmed except themselves. It is a legacy of shame for the state.
It’s not too late to turn these policies around, but the momentum is all in the other direction. A horrific crime like the Cheshire murders last summer has the entire state fearing for its safety, but the answer is not simply to lock up more people. As proof, look to the fact that far more people are in prison today than 20 years ago, and yet atrocities like Cheshire’s continue to happen.
There is no simple answer. That is why taking the easy route and putting more people away and asking fewer questions cannot be accepted. The state must do a better job.