Aiming for course corrections on prison priorities
by Diane Carman
phone her 303-954-1489 or
dcarman@denverpost.com
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5229207
Denver,CO,USA
Ari Zavaras felt sick when he had to appear before the legislature's Joint Budget
Committee recently. It was not because he thought the lawmakers would turn down his
request for more money. No, it made him queasy to think they'd probably approve it.
The new director of the Department of Corrections calls his bureaucratic empire "the
Pac-Man of state government" because it gobbles all the money.
Nobody disagrees.
Since 1985, general fund spending on corrections has grown from $57 million a year to
$533.1 million; it's gone from 2.8 percent of the operating budget to 8.6 percent;
and it keeps falling behind.
The latest estimate for meeting the needs of the exploding prison population in the
state is $806 million over the next five years - and that's just to build the gulags.
Staffing them is another cancer on the state budget, spreading at the rate of $27,500
per year for each inmate.
Zavaras' baby step toward slaying the monster that is savaging Colorado's quality of
life is to restore funding for programs to rehabilitate prison inmates.
He's asking for money for treating things such as substance abuse, illiteracy, mental
health problems, anger issues and the critically insufficient life skills of the
inmates incarcerated in the state.
The objective, he said, is to keep inmates from committing crimes after they complete
their sentences and are released to the community.
"For every 1 percent we can lower recidivism rates, it means $4.9 million we don't
have to spend on prisons."
Then there's the significant fringe benefit that fewer crimes are committed when
ex-cons don't reoffend.
"It's really a win-win," Zavaras said.
For sure.
It's just so inadequate.
The prison crisis is not something that calls for a bit of judicious tweaking.
It's Colorado's very own Iraq war.
It was sold to voters on flawed intelligence, distorted over the years to evoke
irrational fear, exploited by politicians for their cynical self-interest and
transformed into an industry that feeds on the whole unseemly, craven, warped public
policy for the sole benefit of its own insatiable greed.
Now it's a bona fide quagmire, and nobody in power has the guts to admit it.
Colorado's prison population has exploded because politicians in the mid-1980s
created the bogus war on drugs instead of doing the right thing - treating mental
illness and addiction. Then to look tough, they doubled the sentences for all
felonies.
It was a dream come true for corrections workers unions. It also was a slam-dunk for
political poseurs with more ego than conscience.
Everybody knows it's a whole lot easier to campaign on attacking people than to dare
to talk about real problems.
Now, 20 years and billions of dollars later, the war continues without end, and no
surge in incarceration is going to stop it.
DOC figures reveal that of the 21,000 inmates in state prisons, more than 4,000 are
doing time for drug offenses, and 50 percent of those arrests were for simple
possession. At the same time, funding for drug-treatment programs in the state has
plummeted.
In contrast, New York state funded an aggressive program targeting nonviolent drug
offenders in 1990, offering them deferred sentences if they pleaded guilty and
enrolled in drug-treatment programs.
It cut recidivism rates 87 percent.
While Colorado is hemorrhaging money to build more and more and more prisons, New
York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has proposed closing dozens of prisons because of an
8,000-person drop in inmates, and is studying changes in sentencing laws to reduce
the prison population further.
Zavaras said he's willing to consider "any and all proposals" for stopping the
runaway growth of the prison industry in the state. He's not ready to advocate for
the obvious solutions - changing sentencing laws and the insanely self-perpetuating
war on drugs.
If somebody else takes up the cause, he promises to listen, however.
Now all we need is a leader.
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I intend to last long enough to put out of business all *****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
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"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
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