HARRISBURG Prisons chief promotes bill for treatment
The inmate population has nearly doubled under new laws and sentences.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- State Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard urged legislators Wednesday to support a bill that would allow judges to sentence hundreds of nonviolent criminals to drug or alcohol treatment programs instead of the prison terms they now must serve.
Beard told the Senate Appropriations Committee the bill would help alleviate increasingly crowded conditions in Pennsylvania's prisons and enhance public safety by reducing the chances that the offenders will commit another crime.
It also would save taxpayers' money. Even after subtracting the cost of the treatment, diverting 1,500 inmates -- the estimated maximum likely to qualify -- into the proposed program would save as much as $40 million a year, he said.
"We can put [that money] into proven prevention programs like early-childhood education, tutoring programs, teen-pregnancy programs," Beard said, "or we can give more money to the police to make more certain that people who commit crimes in Pennsylvania are caught."
The Corrections Department's $1.4 billion budget request -- a 3 percent increase from this year -- was the official focus of the hearing.
But the senators quizzed Beard on subjects as diverse as boot camps for young offenders, the high cost of caring for the growing population of inmates older than 50 and the prospect of reactivating the Pittsburgh prison after it closes in early 2005.
What he emphasized
But Beard repeatedly steered the discussion back to the alternative-sentencing bill sponsored by Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery.
"It is really important that we do something here," he said, "because 70 percent of the people that are coming in our front door have a drug or alcohol problem. That's probably one of the biggest things that's helping drive crime in our state."
The state inmate population has mushroomed -- from about 21,000 in 1990 to nearly 41,000 now -- as lawmakers have enacted tougher criminal laws and longer sentences. The current population exceeds the 26 prisons' capacity by 19 percent.
"Nationwide, the average inmate serves about 21/2 years," Beard said. "In Pennsylvania, the average inmate serves over 51/2 years. That's the highest in the nation."
By far the fastest-growing segment of the inmate population comprises criminals convicted of the least serious crimes, many of whom have drug and alcohol problems.
Greenleaf's bill targets those in that group who have no record of violent behavior, did not use a deadly weapon in committing their crime and were not convicted of a crime involving personal injury to the victim.
How this would work
If the prosecutor requests it, a judge could send the convict to the Corrections Department for an evaluation of whether he or she would benefit from the program.
Those who are approved would undergo 15 to 24 months of treatment, including an initial six months in prison followed by participation in a community-based treatment program and finally an outpatient program.
Those who fail to complete the program or are expelled could be sentenced to the mandatory minimum prison term or up to the maximum sentence, upon request by the prosecutor.
Currently, drug treatment is a sentencing alternative only for defendants facing time in county jails. Greenleaf's bill would allow state inmates to be diverted into such programs, said Gregg Warner, the senator's legal counsel.
Beard, a career corrections official first appointed to run the state prison system in 2001 by then-Gov. Tom Ridge and reappointed by Gov. Ed Rendell last year, said research shows that the length of a prison term is less important in deterring crime than the certainty of punishment -- "the fact that something happens to somebody, not how long somebody is necessarily punished."