Memphis Commercial Appeal
The High Cost...

Original Article

The high cost of incarceration
Close scrutiny of the budget should not omit what we spend to put people behind bars
Saturday, April 12, 2008

In the heart of the country's most violent metro area, it's not surprising that Shelby County has the third highest jail incarceration rate in the country.

Public officials are under pressure from outraged constituents to arrest as many criminals as possible, set bonds as high as they can and, in the case of Sheriff Mark Luttrell, press the case for a larger, more efficient county jail.

An expansion in 2001 added 256 beds to what was then a 2,789-bed jail. Current trends in law enforcement are quickly leading to the need for even more.

Still, seen against a backdrop of an anticipated county budget shortfall, a study by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute suggests that a thorough review of 201 Poplar's population and its procedures should be undertaken to determine if too many people are behind bars here. One of the problems with the jail is the incarceration of nonviolent offenders who can't afford the high bails set on their cases.

That's a reflection of what has been going on nationally in the field of corrections. Jail populations increased 21 percent between 2001 and 2006.

And there is no question that a disproportionate share of the impact is borne by the African-American community, where the loss of so many young men to jail and prison has hastened the growth of gang culture, the disintegration of the family and the devaluing of education.

Prison has become almost a rite of passage for some young African-American males and a laboratory for the development of the criminal mind.

At the same time, the cost of running prisons and jails is making it more difficult for state and local governments to maintain other essential services. It costs more than four times as much to house a jail inmate in Shelby County than to educate a child in the Memphis City Schools.

Those statistics were difficult to ignore this week as Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton announced that it will be necessary to lay off as many as 270 county employees unless some other way is found to eliminate only part of the $29.5 million shortfall anticipated in the budget for fiscal 2009.

The mayor's office has imposed a hiring and promotion freeze for county offices under its control and eliminated out-of-town travel. A hunt is under way for county services that may be less essential than others. Tax and fee increases might soon be worming their way onto the agenda.

All of which points to the necessity of carefully scrutinizing every expenditure in county government to make sure it's getting the biggest bang for the taxpayer's buck. There is no reason not to include the county jail.