Monday, October 05, 2009
Editorial: Searching for alternatives to jail
Technology may enable the state to punish nonviolent offenders without taking up expensive prison space.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
A lot of people are upset about closing the Natural Bridge Juvenile Correctional Center and shipping its 70-some nonviolent offenders to facilities designed more for incarceration than for smoothing their transition to freedom.
The angst is justified. Natural Bridge offered an exemplary program.
The response, though, should not be to pour money back into Virginia correctional facilities that the governor closed to balance the state's budget. The response should be to rethink corrections, and how the commonwealth goes about trying to reduce crime and recidivism by turning around the lives of far more people than Natural Bridge could help.
One way is to make more use of advancing technology to allow sentencing alternatives that keep less serious offenders from behind bars in the first place and give them the incentives to stay that way.
An example in DUI cases that mandate jail time is a $12-a-day anklet that can pick up on alcohol in a person's sweat, exposing offenders if they violate court orders to quit drinking -- and only then sending them to serve their time on the taxpayers' dime.
A recent Washington Post story about a Northern Virginia woman serves as a case in point. She had pleaded guilty in drug court to drunken driving and drug possession, was put on probation, ordered into treatment and required to be tested periodically for substance abuse.
She did well for a couple of years, but when a deputy showed up at her home one night a couple of months ago for an unannounced breath test, it showed she had been drinking, violating the court's terms. Rather than going to jail, though, she got a second chance at an alternative: She chose the anklet, and its continuous remote monitoring, rather than a Loudoun County cell.
She likened the device to training wheels. "Soon, I'll have it off and be on my own, alcohol-free."
She pays the $12-a-day cost. Loudoun saves the $150 a day it would cost to jail her.
Treatment and testing entail costs, too. Combined with 24/7 monitoring, though, the money goes to address behavior that sitting in a jail cell is not likely to change.
Politicians in this election season are stumbling all over themselves to advocate for reopening the Natural Bridge center. At the expense of what?
All should make clear their broader plans for giving nonviolent offenders a second chance at life.
