Prison Reform in Washington?

Not long ago, the Justice Department of the Federal Government called for widespread prison reform at the federal level.  This is partly the result of the dramatic increase of prisoners in federal facilities with very long drug related sentences.  This has gained some attention in the media and leads some persons to automatically assume Washington is in the same situation.  There is continual pressure on the legislature to save money by releasing inmates earlier and earlier.  The assumption is that Washington prisons are full of non-violent offenders. This is wrong.

A brief look at the fact sheet released by the Washington Department of Corrections tells the truth. Washington prisons are not full of non-violent offenders.  The opposite is true.  The fact sheet for June of 2013 can be found at http://www.doc.wa.gov/aboutdoc/docs/msFactCard

The truth is that very few first-time, non-violent offenders are sent to prison.  Repeating the myth that prisons are full of first-time, non-violent offenders is strangely comforting.  It lets us express our outrage at a faceless government bureaucracy that surely must be doing something wrong.  And it makes solving the problem of adequately funding the criminal justice and prison systems seem easy. We tend to offer simplistic solutions like:  “We just need to stop wasting so much money on nonviolent criminals.”

While it may be easy and make us feel good to criticize our criminal justice system for incarcerating too many nonviolent criminals, the fact is that those offenders are not filling prisons in Washington State.  Instead, Washington prisons house mainly violent or repeat felony offenders.

The persons who are sent to prison for long terms in Washington are those who refuse to abide in our society without hurting others. We have no choice but to keep them locked away from the rest of us.

Washington’s prosecutors will continue to work with the legislators, judges, police, victims, and criminal defense lawyers to get smart in the fight against crime.  But we will all have to accept the reality that we will not achieve substantial savings from releasing first-time, non-violent offenders from prison, because those criminals simply aren’t sent to prison in the first place.  They are not the problem.

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