•April 6, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Gov. Bruce Rauner has a goal of reducing Illinois prison numbers by 25 percent in the coming few years. A blue ribbon group he set up is at work to make this a reality. Should we do so?

When I was a back-bench state legislator a half century ago, there were 7,000 inmates in our prisons. Recently the number reached almost 50,000, though that has come back to 46,000; crime is down and the justice system is going lighter on drug crimes, I am told.

During the 1980s, we got tough on crime with Class X felony and truth-in-sentencing laws. These policies took sentencing discretion away from judges and put felons in prison for longer stretches than before.

Illegal drug activity was also up, a profitable alternative for young men from poor neighborhoods who had neither positive role models nor jobs.

Criminologist David Olson at Loyola University in Chicago is a member of Rauner’s blue ribbon group.

Olson points out that part of the increased prison population results from convictions for non-violent drug offenses. In addition, 40 percent of all prison inmates are inside the walls for sometimes minor violations of their parole.

Rehabilitation, mental health and education programs in prisons are also woefully inadequate to meet inmate needs, which results in more inmates ending up back in prison than might be the case otherwise.

As a result, we built one new prison a year for a couple of decades and now have 30, and yet the prisons are overcrowded, with a rated capacity of 34,000 to house the 46,000 inmates.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.