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	Make Vital Changes in Prison System Daily World June 19, 2011 http://www.dailyworld.com/article/20110619/OPINION/106190307 People who know about prisons — including, in a column on this page, state Supreme Court Justice Catherine Kimball — can tell you all about how messed up Louisiana's penal system is. The United States has the world's highest incarceration rate. No dictatorship or extremist religious regime imprisons a higher percentage of its citizens. And Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the United States — 885 per 100,000 residents in the state and federal systems as of 2009, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Louisiana's spending on the state correctional system has tripled in 20 years, yet we actually lag. Nationally, corrections spending has quadrupled. Who's running up this tab? In Louisiana, about eight new inmates in 10 each year were convicted for nonviolent crimes, most related to substance abuse. We'll add our voice to those calling for passage of legislation proposed by the Louisiana Sentencing Commission and sponsored by Rep. Joe Lopinto, R-Metairie. The bills would allow nonviolent, nonsexual offenders to reduce their sentences by up to 60 percent if they follow prison rules and undergo any required treatment; and would make such offenders eligible for parole consideration after 25 percent of their sentences instead of the current 33 percent. The savings could be huge, maybe $75 million over 10 years. The changes could actually make the system work better, particularly if the savings go into better parole and probation supervision. The improvements might be the first steps toward dealing with the other mysteries of crime and punishment that seem impossible to unravel: » A series of post-war moves toward rehabilitation instead of punishment are regarded as a counterproductive flop. So, many states reinstituted the death penalty and began to stiffen sentences in the mid- to late 1970s. Getting tough did nothing to prevent the violence associated with the crack cocaine epidemic a decade later. » Last week, Gregory Menard, 51, was booked in Lafayette on drunken driving and vehicular homicide charges after two people died in a crash. Menard had three previous drunken driving convictions and might have had a fourth except for a paperwork foul-up. We see the carnage created by repeat drunken drivers over and over. Our only apparent options, as things are now, are lax treatment or draconian sentences, neither of which seem to do the job. » In an infamous local case, a one-time priest, Gilbert Gauthe, was sentenced to 20 years for molesting children in Vermilion Parish. He was released on good time after 10 years in 1995, and within months faced new sexual battery allegations involving a toddler in Texas. The second case was never proven. But Gauthe had been diagnosed as a pedophile, for which there is no effective cure. He was released as though prison might have taught him a lesson. Adopting the commission's recommendations represents a step away from politicized remedies and toward real and effective solutions.
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