Needed: a federal-state partnership for regional prisons.

• Author: McCollum, Bill
• Position: The United States of Violence: A Special Section - Cover Story

Every Day, 65 people are murdered in the U.S. Annually, nearly 5,000,000 000 individuals are victims of violent crime, which has increased 531% since 1960. Americans are demanding that something be done about it.

There is a crisis in the state prison systems. The problem of overpopulation in penal institutions, dictated by Federal guidelines, has forced states to release even violent career criminals prematurely. These aren't second-story men or purse snatchers-they're murderers, rapists, and child molesters being turned loose on society.. A murderer may get a 15-year sentence and walk out a free man after serving just five and one-half years. Unfortunately for law-abiding citizens, that is typical. Studies show that punishment for offenders who commit serious crimes has tumbled by two-thirds since the 1950s.

A Justice Department study reveals that only 26% of the 4,300,000 people convicted of a crime are locked behind bars. The remainder are on probation or parole. That means that three out of four persons convicted of a criminal act are out on the streets on any given day.

The total annual expense of crime nationwide is $674,000,000,000, or more than double the yearly defense budget, according to a recent magazine report. This toll includes law enforcement, security, and medical costs, as well as lost income and property.

According to Bureau of Justice statistics, violent offenders in 36 states served, on average, just 37% of their sentence time. Fifty-one percent were discharged from prison in two years or less; 76% in four years or less.

The only way to keep these dangerous individuals off the streets is to build more prisons, get the states to change their laws to require violent repeat offenders to serve at least 85% of their sentences, and have minimum mandatory sentences. It is necessary to target the seven percent of the felons who commit 80% of the violent crimes and get released from prison after serving a small portion of their sentences.

The proposal to place 100,000 police on the streets to arrest more criminals will be just one more piece of "feel good" legislation if there is no place to put those apprehended. Arresting more criminals - or, in many cases, the same repeat offenders - only will spin the revolving door faster if additional prisons aren't built and state laws changed.

This is the major thrust of the comprehensive crime bill H.R. 2872 drafted by the House Republican Task Force on Crime that I chair. The...