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Show People, Politics I and Policy in Pleasant Grove By E. MARK BEZZANT The long awaited trial of Arthur Gary Bishop is over. The verdict is guilty, The penalty is death. Now the appeals begin. The process is lengthy and costly but the real cost in most cases just begins when the sentence begins. This week the legislature is meeting again in special session. One of the nagging problems they must face is that of adequately funding the state's penal system. It isn't something they seem to enjoy doing. It seems they wait untill conditions at a given facility become so abhorent they are forced to patch things up, hoping to get by a few - more years. Frankly the situation has been studied to death and it is time a concerted effort is I made by the legislature to address : some of the fundamental problems. First, you can't pass a bunch of tough laws which have the effect of putting more people in prison without being willing to fund that prison system. Nor can yo.us.ay, that we are. going to get tough on certain things without being . prepared to pay the bill. The alternative is that people get paroled who have no business being paroled. Judges and wardens have few alternatives given the prison's capacity. If you put 1000 prisoners in a facility built for 800 you are going to have problems. Secondly, prison time costs money. At this point in time it costs about $15,000 to house a prisoner for one year. Ultimately I see that society is saying it is worth that to keep a criminal off the street. In a life sentence case it could cost society $300,000 to keep a prisoner for 20 years. It is like being hit twice. First, innocent people lose their lives or property . and immesurable suffering takes place and then society has to cough up thousands to rid themselves of the problem for a while. The Art Bishops and Gary Gillmores are the exception. The fact is that most stay only a short while in the prison. The average stay is something like several years. The behavior patterns exhibited are anti-social. For some the mere thought of prison is enough to induce a change in behavior. For others it is like getting a doctors degree in crime. Still others need the time out of society to learn other patterns of behavior. Such patterns are not learned in a cell. The solution seems to lie in pursuing a course which emphasizes more the criminal's responsibility to the victim, their responsibility to learn socially acceptable behavior and their responsibility to help carry their freight in a productive way while serving time. It is society's obligation to give them that opportunity. It is the legislature's obligation as society's representatives to meet the problem squarely. |