The greatest escape

Hello all Oregon prisoners. Put down your tiny hammers and give up on your dream of tunneling your way toward freedom. If you stay in prison, eat your three meals a day and enjoy your free health care, you’ll see a third of your sentence disappear.

Since the Oregon Legislature passed HB 3508 in July, prisoners eligible for a 20 percent reduction in their sentences for good behavior could see that jump to 30 percent. The new law will save taxpayers up to $6 million by sending home 4,169 eligible inmates. Inmates must be incarcerated due to nonviolent crimes and already be eligible for a 20 percent reduction. If all goes as planned, the bill will reduce the Oregon Department of Correction’s (DOC) $1.4 billion dollar budget.

That’s correct. The annual Oregon prison system budget is $1.4 billion dollars—about $77 per prisoner per day. To put that in perspective, Portland Public Schools, another overcrowded state institution, has a general budget of less than $500 million.

What kind of message are we sending here? Public schools are being shut down all across the state, classrooms are bulging with 30 students per class and yet the Oregon Legislature in 2005 approved a new $190 million prison in Madras, because the state is more worried about an inmate’s comfort than a child’s education.

Oregon Legislature’s answer to cutting prison costs is the same it has used for public schools: furloughs. Teachers and students get less time in the classroom and now, criminals can too. According to the DOC’s Web site, 68 percent of inmates are receiving work or training of some kind. In the present economic recession, prisoners are getting a more valuable education than our kids.

Sending property crime offenders home early to save taxpayers money is simply redirecting those funds right back to those criminal’s pockets. Oregon boasts that it has a low 30 percent recidivism rate, or one-third of every released prisoner is caught again within three years. That means that out of these approximate 4,200 prisoners, 1,400 of them will rob you or do worse.

You, the taxpayer, would be paying for the $77 daily cost of housing, clothing, feeding and educating convicted criminals. Let’s not forget the added cost of home security, property damage and therapy. The state, and its taxpayers, will then provide care for their families while the principal earner is living comfortably with every need provided for.

Oregon is coddling its prisoners. The Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution (EOCI) in Pendleton offers housing, food service and health care to its guests. Local church and civic groups donate thousands of dollars annually so that residents of the prison can receive their GED certificate from nearby Blue Mountain Community College. Textbooks, tuition and supplies are all provided to new students free of charge.

The facility also offers a creative arts program, which includes woodworking and cast iron projects, and is internationally recognized for its “Prison Blues” line of denim clothing, all manufactured on-site by prisoners. In their free time, inmates can enjoy the institution’s many outdoor facilities like their fully equipped gym, basketball courts and two baseball fields.

The EOCI provides a perfect example of a good idea getting way out of hand. Yes, prisoners should be made into productive members of society and pay their own way through prison. The EOCI’s ideas are innovative and fiscally effective. But the EOCI and Oregon’s 13 other prisons are only addressing the symptoms, not the illness.

All of the money invested in building new prisons could go to education or work programs for those of us that don’t hurt and rob people. We should focus on ways to keep people out of jail in the first place instead of worrying how we can get them back on the streets more quickly. Denying law-abiding citizens and children opportunity in favor of prisoners is nothing short of criminal.