Meese Says Record Prison Building Pace Is Inadequate

An additional several billion dollars will be needed to build and operate new federal prisons over the next five years, even though the government already has been putting up penitentiaries at a record pace since 1982, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III said Tuesday.

In a speech that an Administration source said was aimed partly at reducing resistance from the Office of Management and Budget to more prison money, Meese attributed the inmate population boom to tough crime and anti-drug laws enacted in recent years.

The attorney general, speaking in Phoenix at a meeting of the American Correctional Assn., also called for more private employment of prisoners, which he said would benefit companies, the public, correctional institutions and the inmates. The text of the speech was released here.

Meese, who in the past has been a staunch advocate of the Administration’s emphasis on budgetary restraint, said: “The issue here is public safety. And the only real option is to build more prisons.”

Facilities Under Construction

The government has allocated $742 million for prison construction and renovation from fiscal 1982 through the current fiscal year. The U. S. Bureau of Prisons has added space for more than 4,000 inmates nationwide since 1982 and is constructing facilities for another 7,000.

However, Meese said, “this has not been enough. We still need more prisons.”

The attorney general, noting that some argue for alternatives to incarceration such as community service, said: “It is a simple fact that in certain cases there is no alternative to separating a dangerous criminal from society in order to ensure public safety. And that means prisons.”

Over the last year, the numbers of federal prisoners increased 6% to a record high of 44,000. Existing federal prisons were designed to handle only 28,000 inmates, Meese said, adding that states are experiencing similar pressures.

“While we have succeeded in committing additional resources to law enforcement and prosecution, corrections has not received the same treatment,” Meese said.

Space Shortfall Rises

The current combined federal, state and local shortfall of prison bed spaces exceeds 84,000, up sharply from 53,000 two years ago, the attorney general added.

Such overcrowding can lead to court intervention in prison administration on civil rights grounds, setting maximum population totals, Meese said. He noted that 35 states and the District of Columbia are operating under court orders, with suits pending in five more.

“Court-imposed ‘caps’ at the federal level could potentially require the government to release prisoners earlier than current incarceration policies--and common sense--dictate,” Meese said. “We would be unable, in all likelihood, to follow our current enforcement, detention, sentencing and incarceration policies.

“We may be forced to decline to prosecute many types of cases simply because there would be no place to incarcerate those convicted,” he said.

A major but seldom-noticed problem is that “prisons overcrowded with convicted criminals have affected our capacity to detain those arrested and awaiting trial or sentencing,” Meese told the correctional authorities.

Problem for U.S. Marshals

Because of the dramatic increase in the populations of state prisons and local jails over the last decade, the amount of detention space at such facilities for U. S. marshals to hold those arrested on federal warrants has shrunk, Meese said.

As a result, 16% of federal detainees are being held under “emergency” conditions, where local jail space has been cut off.

Meese said that the cost of allowing offenders to be free in society is much greater than the price tag for building prisons.

Cites Social Cost Study

He cited a recently published economic study by the National Institute of Justice, which found that one hard-core inmate “was usually responsible for committing 187 crimes per year at a cost of $430,000 to society.”

“Imprisoning 1,000 of these inmates would cost $25 million per year” but would save “social costs” of $430 million, Meese said. “While this might seem staggering, it really makes a great deal of sense, since all reliable estimates show that crime costs our society $100 billion annually,” he said.