WASHINGTON POST: Legislators are reviewing reports similar to the NAACP’s that say crime rates can be reduced while spending less on prisons, Lawrence said. Some states are experimenting with programs that allow parole violators into treatment programs instead of prisons. Others have amended drug sentencing laws to allow more drug offenders to go straight to rehabilitation programs…
“Prisons are necessary but way overused,” said Nolan, vice president of Prison Fellowship Ministries. “As conservatives, we are suspicious of government and [also] suspicious of the cost of government. But we have turned sort of a blind eye on the spending on prison. It has skyrocketed without a parallel increase in public safety.”
Nolan and other advocates of overhauling the criminal justice system point to studies by the Pew Center on the States, which have found that one in 100 adults was in prison or jail last year and that one in 31 Americans is under some form of corrections control — jail, prison, parole or probation… (more)
