NEWS
February 14, 2007
Iowa prison growth to eclipse neighbors but S.D., study says
By William Petroski
Register Staff Reporter The growth of Iowa's prison population over the next five years is forecast to outpace all but one surrounding Midwest state, according to a national study issued today.
Iowa's nine prisons, which held 8,857 convicts at the end of 2006, are projected to grow to 10,284 inmates by the end of 2011, an increase of 16 percent, according to a report sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The only neighboring state that is forecast to grow at a faster rate is South Dakota, where the prison population is projected to increase from 3,442 to 4,241 inmates, up 23 percent.
The Rev. Carlos Jayne, a retired United Methodist minister who is a lobbyist for the Justice Reform Consortium, a criminal justice activist group, contends Iowa is wasting taxpayers' money.
"We've always felt that people are being put in prison too long and they're not getting out soon enough," he said.
Polk County Attorney John Sarcone, a Democrat, has a different view. Like many other prosecutors, he believes most people are behind bars because they have "earned their way to prison" by repeatedly breaking the law.
"If you look at the people in prison, you are not going to find choirboys there. There is a myth that we are sending first-time drug possessors to prison. That doesn't happen in Iowa," Sarcone said.
Nationwide, state and federal prison populations are projected to increase over the next five years from 1.53 million to 1.72 million inmates, up 13 percent, the study said. This follows a 700 percent increase in the U.S. prison population between 1970 and 2005.
The price tag for prison growth nationally is staggering, the Pew study added. The projected 192,023 new prisoners could cost as much as $27.5 billion: potentially a cumulative $15 billion in new operating costs and $12.5 billion in new construction costs by 2011.
"Every additional dollar spent on prisons, of course, is one dollar less that can go to preparing for the next Hurricane Katrina, educating young people, providing health care for the elderly, or repairing roads and bridges," the report concluded.
In Iowa, the national study comes at a time when some state lawmakers have been discussing the possibility of taking a fresh look at Iowa's criminal sentencing laws.
Although the numbers of drug offenders sent to prison in Iowa have declined the past two years, increased admissions of drug offenders have helped drive the increase in Iowa's prison population, according to the Iowa Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning.
Over the past two decades, the percentage of convicts serving time for drug offenses has increased from 2 percent of Iowa's prison population to 25 percent. More than half of these offenders are serving time for crimes linked to methamphetamine, amphetamines or meth-making substances.
Each Iowa inmate costs taxpayers an average of $23,367 annually, according to the Iowa Department of Corrections. To accommodate future growth and to update aging facilities, consultants have told Iowa prison officials to consider building new housing for 1,500 inmates.
The state corrections agency already employs about 4,100 people and last year had an operating budget of $313 million for prisons and community corrections programs, such as probation, parole and work release.
Jayne contends Iowa is allowing criminal sentencing to be controlled by county attorneys rather than judges and is requiring mandatory sentencing for too many crimes. He also complains that Iowa is using prisons as warehouses for the mentally ill and it is failing to provide substance abuse therapy instead of prison for thousands of offenders.
Sarcone, the Polk County attorney, said offenders in the Des Moines area are offered drug treatment, mental health services, job training, and other programs in an effort to keep them out of prison. Despite those efforts, some offenders still fail, leaving judges no alternative but incarceration, he said.
He added he strongly supports investing in education and other programs for young people, theorizing if someone has a high school diploma, he or she is less likely to get into trouble.
Gov. Chet Culver campaigned last fall on a platform that included continuing the state's crackdown on meth and constructing a new maximum-security state prison in Fort Madison that would cost at least $80 million. Since taking office last month, Culver has called for a $17 million increase in spending to help staff an expansion of the Oakdale state prison and to fill correctional officers' posts in other prisons.
"Obviously, the No. 1 priority is public safety," said Courtney Maxwell Greene, a Culver aide.
Culver isn't proposing changes in criminal sentencing laws, but Iowa is a leader in community corrections and has a comparatively low incarceration rate, Greene said. Iowa has about 30,000 offenders in community corrections, and its 2005 incarceration rate was 12th-lowest in the nation.
Former Lt. Gov. Arthur Neu, a lawyer from Carroll who now serves on the Iowa Board of Corrections, has seen many mandatory sentences added to the state's criminal laws since the late '70s, some of which he says should be re-examined.
"I would rather leave sentencing to the vagaries of a judge, rather than a one-size-fits-all Legislature, especially when they are pandering to the public to show how tough they are," Neu said.
Gary Kendell, the new director of the Iowa Governor's Office of Drug Control Policy, said mandatory minimum sentences aren't necessarily bad because they provide sentencing consistency. But it's also important to know details of each offense in evaluating each sentence, he said.
"If, for example, someone is making $1,000 a week dealing dope, they are dealing that to other people in the community and they are a problem," Kendell said.
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