As Pennsylvania, along with most other states in the country, continues to grapple with severe budget deficits, state legislators and citizens alike are looking for ways to make up shortfalls while maintaining essential state programs. According to a recent editorial in the Pocono Record, state lawmakers are largely ignoring one significant state program that, if modified, could save the state millions of dollars: the Pennsylvania prison system.

During the 1980s, Pennsylvania state legislators followed the lead of federal and state lawmakers throughout the U.S. in adopting "tough on crime" policies which implemented jail time and other harsh punitive penalties for a variety of offenses. At the time, Pennsylvania had seven state prisons with a capacity of 8,000 inmates. Now, the state has 27 prisons that hold 51,000 inmates. Many of the offenders currently serving time in Pennsylvania prisons are there because of non-violent offenses such as first-time DUI, minor drug charges, shoplifting and technical parole violations.

The significant number of non-violent offenders in state prisons is coming at a high cost. Imprisonment costs the state approximately $35,000 per year. In addition, Pennsylvania has been forced to send over 2,000 inmates to nearby states because there is no longer any room in our state prisons. These exports cost the state approximately $42 million per year.

In contrast, community correction centers and halfway houses for non-violent offenders only cost the state between $5,000 and $10,000 per inmate. Such treatment programs also significantly lower the rate of recidivism, concurrently lowering future court and imprisonment costs.

The need for prison reform is clear: the current state budget, while cutting education spending by over 50 percent, calls for an increase of $115 million for the Department of Corrections. Hopefully, state legislators will soon consider or increase programs to treat and reform non-violent offenders, instead of merely sentencing them to a costly prison stay.

Source: Pocono Record, "There's hope for Pa.'s crowded, costly prisons," James P. Bond, 17 July 2011