Growing Jail Population Is a Financial Drain.

• Position: Brief Article

Jails are becoming filled beyond capacity and costing taxpayers millions of dollars, warn Steve Smith and Stephen Brodt, professors of criminal justice, Ball State University, Muncie, Ind. Inmate growth is outpacing available beds, and many counties are being forced--either by lawsuits or political pressure--to expand existing facilities or build new ones to meet the demand to house a growing jail population.

Factors causing the explosion in the jail population are "get tough" attitudes by judges, legislators, and prosecutors, and mandatory jail sentences for everything from violating a suspended driver's license to the failure to pay child support. "Judges and prosecutors think that every offender should be locked up," Smith points out. "Judges want offenders to go to jail if convicted because they are there to protect the public. Prosecutors think it is their job to send everyone to jail because that is why they were elected.

"Each time we send someone to jail for a non-violent crime, the taxpayers have to pay for that person...