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Yesterday, a report "Commissioned by the Governor" was released outlining 14 actions the state should take to address West Virginia's exploding prison population. Months ago, I blogged about this issue and what seemed to be a very powerful push to build yet another prison in West Virginia. Well, it seems the Governor's Commission has decided that the cornerstone of any plan to address West Virginia's unnatural prison growth problem would be building a new 1,200 bed prison. Fortunately, some of the members of the Commission weren't shy about telling the public why they felt that was a bad idea. The Rev. Dennis Sparks, Executive Director, WV Council of Churches: "The tough on crime methodology of the last 20 years has failed," Sparks said. "We're locking up people and they're coming out as better criminals. We have to move into preventive and treatment mode." Sparks isn't sold on the commission's recommendation for a new prison. He said he was in the minority when members discussed the issue. "If we start building a new prison today, that'll be $200 or $300 million, not counting the costs to run it," Sparks said. "That's more money not used for innovative treatment programs." Sparks contends a vast number of inmates are low-risk offenders while he acknowledges the need for dangerous criminals to remain locked up. He also said he was concerned the public would pay more attention to the recommendation for a new prison rather than the other ideas. I would agree with Rev. Sparks that people are more likely to pay attention to the new prison aspect as opposed to anything else in the report. The Rev. Matthew Watts also makes a good point when talking about what was missing in the report: Watts said he was disappointed that the report didn't include more measures to prevent juveniles from becoming caught up in the criminal justice system. "I think we're failing to realize that all of these adult offenders were children, and [many] were adjudicated juvenile offenders," he said. "You can't fix the problem unless you fix the pipeline." I'll second that. It seems as if the report itself may be a way to try and legitimize a bad idea (building a new prison.) There are a litany of reasons that building a new prison will have minimal if any impact in addressing overcrowding. First of all, 200 million dollars spent on a building a new prison is 200 million that cannot be spent on crime prevention programs or community corrections programs or even drug treatment programs, all of which would significantly reduce the overcrowding problem. Secondly, our overcrowding problems are now, not later. This prison will take four years to build. Who knows how badly the problem will have gotten by then. Those against prison construction as economic development had better gird themselves, because we officially have a fight on our hands.
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