A little common sense in the way Pennsylvania rehabilitates nonviolent criminals could save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, put the brakes on our prison-building spree and actually make communities safer.

Other states are already at it. New York, for one, has seen crime fall at the same time reform measures have cut prison populations by 19 percent.

But Gov. Ed Rendell and lawmakers have been slow off the mark, even though Pennsylvania has had to ship 2,100 inmates to Virginia and Michigan this spring while three more prisons are being built here.

Twenty-seven states saw prison populations fall last year, and the nation as a whole had the first decline in state prisoners since 1972, according to the Pew Center on the States.

But Pennsylvania? It led the nation, adding 2,122 inmates.

Budget wrecker

"We can't build prisons fast enough," said state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, a Montgomery County Republican who is pushing nine prison reform bills. "Each prison costs $200 million … and they cost $50 million to $60 million a year to run. We can't afford it. It's a failed system."

Twenty years ago, Pennsylvania housed 22,000 inmates at a cost of $633 million (in 2009 dollars). Now there are 52,000 prisoners, and the cost has tripled to $1.8 billion.

While taking the budget ax this year to just about every department, Rendell and the Legislature did nothing to limit the growth of prisons. The new budget gives the 26-prison Corrections Department an extra $81.6 million — a 5.1 percent increase.

Meanwhile, Rendell and lawmakers slashed $5 million from agriculture, $7 million from state police, $9 million from emergency management, $13 million from environmental protection, $16 million from assistance for college tuition and on and on.

In a news release about the new budget, the governor's office barely mentioned prisons except to say disingenuously that the state "has no control" over prison spending.

No less an authority than Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard would disagree with that assertion.

Appearing recently before a Senate panel, Beard made clear his support for prison reform, saying tough-on-crime attitudes and the war on drugs have combined to needlessly fill prisons with nonviolent offenders.

Election jitters

Locking up less-serious offenders is often counterproductive, Beard said, because underlying addictions or mental illnesses that lead to criminal behavior may not be resolved behind bars. He said treatment in the community is more successful.

"We know that many of these offenders need treatment and that treatment, if done correctly, can effectively reduce recidivism," Beard said.

Greenleaf's reform package would, among other things, get low-risk offenders into alternative programs outside prison, move offenders with short sentences to lower-cost community corrections centers and commit parole violators to prison only for major infractions.

Further down the road, Greenleaf said, the state needs to do more to prevent delinquency so children don't become adults sitting in prison.

The good news is that three of Greenleaf's bills recently passed the Senate and have received a hearing in the House. The bad news is that House members are up for re-election and some are nervous about being pegged as soft on crime.

Rep. Tom Caltagirone, House Judiciary chair and advocate of prison reform, hopes to bring the bills to a vote in the fall.

"We're the stewards of the taxpayers' money," Caltagirone said. "But this is a heavy, heavy lift."

jhawkes@lnpnews.com