Prisons should be trying to go out of business

• Originaly published in the Chicago Tribune on 8/2/2004

by Patricia Watkins, Executive director, TARGET Area, Development Corp., Convener, Developing Justice Coalition.

The July 27 editorial " . . . and a costly prison glut" is right on target in suggesting our prison system is ripe for reform. Ironically, while the budget "saved" all the prisons, it cut 4 percent across the board from the Department of Corrections budget for programs, including those that help offenders to avoid a life of crime after re-entry into the community.

Missouri's programs have reduced juvenile recidivism rates to below 10 percent. Why, instead of emulating that model, are we saving jobs by keeping prisons open?

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that maintaining the status quo in our prison system is about the jobs of corrections employees. And it's hard to avoid the facts and figures about how much the status quo costs the state.

Costs for the state correctional system went from $377 million in 1980 to $1.3 billion in 2000, a more than 200 percent increase, according the Chicago Urban League.

While we sympathize with communities that rely on public funds from correctional facilities, we invite them to come look around our neighborhoods in Chicago and the suburbs. Illinois sends the highest percent of black drug offenders to prison in the nation, according to the Urban League. While Illinois' African-Americans are 15 percent of the state's illicit drug users, they are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and more than 75 percent of the total drug prisoners in Illinois. More than 44 percent of drug prisoners are from Cook County. When these individuals get out of prison, they face huge difficulties finding jobs, treatment and access to other needed resources.

The bottom line on prisons is that they, at least as much as any industry on Earth, should be trying to put themselves out of business.

We're not naive enough to imagine a day without prisons, but we do believe the state should seek to rein them in when appropriate, and to focus on programs that keep in mind the bottom line: stopping people from breaking laws.

That, we firmly believe, is the direction in which we ought to take the state's prison system.