Is Pennsylvania leading the national race to be the world's greatest prison state?

In the category of imprisonment, the U.S. leads the world. Our commonwealth has shared in this title by growing our corrections budget every year. It's apparent that our country is headed in the wrong direction if we are dependent on crime to help our local economies.

Despite Pennsylvania being ranked toward the bottom of the states in the rate of crime (Uniform Crime Reports 2008), our incarceration rate is not declining but growing 21 percent from 2000 to 2006 and is projected to grow 30 percent from 2008 to 2013, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Corrections has mushroomed to the third largest allocation in our state budget behind health care and education. Can we afford to keep being "tough on crime"? Isn't it time to be "smart on crime"?

The increase in prisoners is not an influx of new residents as our population has been relatively stagnant; it is an increase in long mandatory minimum sentences and technical parole violations for nonviolent offenders. The current methods of incarceration are ineffective and the majority of inmates who are released return to crime.

Why? A big factor is the lack of correction that occurs in jails and prisons because of overcrowded, dangerous prison conditions. Educational and treatment programs have been cut so that more money goes to build our prison industry. It that the type of economic development we want for Pennsylvania?

In his budget address, Gov. Ed Rendell noted "substantial" prison cost increases in the proposed fiscal year 2010-2011 budget. It's a trend, he said, that must reverse.

At a time when we are increasing our state prison population over capacity at 118 percent with more than 51,000 inmates, New York has decreased its prison population 13 percent by focusing on treatment and prerelease programs for nonviolent offenders. Pennsylvania sends inmates to other states as there is no room for them here. We plan to build at least four more prisons costing more than $200 million each to house offenders at a cost, per inmate, of $34,000 per year.

 Most offenders will be released from prison. If we really want safer communities, we should redirect many of our resources to more intensive reintegration efforts. Many prerelease centers remain at least half-empty.

About half of state prisoners are nonviolent. We need to encourage district attorneys to allow alternative, less costly sentencing that has demonstrated success through reduced recidivism rates. More nonviolent offenders should be sentenced into the Recidivism Risk Reduction Incentive program so they can be encouraged to show good conduct to participate and successfully complete treatment and counseling, the original intent of RRRI.

Also underutilized is the State Intermediate Punishment Program. It allows nonviolent offenders with substance abuse that face mandatory sentences to be sentenced to treatment that reduces incarceration in state prison to no less than seven months. Nonviolent offenders do better with shorter sentences that encourage positive rehabilitation versus lengthy incarceration that simply costs the taxpayers money we don't have.

Offenders who violate technical parole but have not committed new crimes would be better served with lesser sanctions than reincarceration in which they could remain in prison for as long as year. Instead of long incarceration periods, they could be sent back to jail for "shock incarceration" for short periods of time such as two to four weeks. Technical parole violators could also be required to go to "halfway back" centers in which they would be more intensely monitored.

When offenders successfully reintegrate, they contribute to our society by being tax-contributors rather than takers and we all win.