Proposal is a waste of money

Prison cells are not the answer Americans are the most incarcerated people in the world. Are we safer than everybody else? Hardly.

Yet we keep building prisons cells, keep spending fortunes to keep people in jail as we double-bolt our doors, walk cautiously or not at all at night, teach our children not to talk to anyone they don't know.

Gov. George Pataki has proposed as part of his budget of $634.8 million to be spent over three years to build seven thousand prison beds. The state will need those and more, he contends, because of tougher sentencing laws. But there are several problems with the governor's plan-not the least of which is the way he plans to finance the new construction. Pataki wants to use what's been characterized as back-door borrowing, a method that skirts the will of the taxpayers and ends up costing millions more in higher interest rates by the time the loans are paid off.

We simply cannot support the proposal.

In philosophy we're closer to the ideas put forth in the state Assembly budget bill. Instead of spending millions of dollars on new prison beds, the assembly plan calls for six thousand community-based drug-treatment beds.

This makes all kinds of sense. Police estimate that here in Syracuse up to 70 percent of crime is drug related. If addicts receive treatment, rather than simple incarceration, chances are better that they will not commit crimes.

The governor wants to the start putting teen felons into the general prison population (where they could no doubt get a graduate course it mayhem). But the Assembly plan calls for a separate juvenile offender maximum security facility. It only makes sense that a prison with a program aimed toward young offenders would stand a better chance of talking out of a lifetime of crime.

We would prefer, too, that instead of building more prisons cells, the governor and the Legislature take another look at the mandatory sentencing guidelines. The prisons are filling up with nonviolent offenders who face lengthy terms because their offenses involved drugs. In fact, 61 percent of the inmates in the system last year were nonviolent. That's up from 33 percent in 1980. Almost half of the people's sent to state prisons last year were nonviolent drug offenders.

Something is not working. The lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key philosophy of dealing with drug addicts is not working.

But even if we believe that 7,000 new prison beds were necessary, Pataki's plan to finance the construction is terribly irresponsible. According to a report issued by state Comptroller H. Carl McCall in December, the state already owes $2.5 billion in non-voter approved debt just for prison construction.

What has happened is that rather than offering a bond act, which would require approval by the voters, the state has created public authorities to issue debt. That debt is then not backed by the full faith and credit of the state. Because of that, the interest rates charged are much higher.

In fact, McCall estimates that if back-door borrowing is used to build Pataki's prison cells, the cost would be almost a $100 million higher, simply because of higher interest rates.

Another reason this is so troubling is because the last time voters were given the opportunity to authorize borrowing for prison construction, they voted it down. The governor's proposal is simply a matter of throwing good money after bad.

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