State Budgets and Convicts. Maybe it's time for Norplant?

State budgets are in the toilet. Prison populations are booming. Gangs--from La Eme and MS-13 to cracker meth cadres and teen family killers to numerous African American goon confabs...are taking over these places. So what to do? Maybe folks on the outside are getting more enlightened--relying on technology to patrol the cellblocks Yet more surprising comes common sense with regard to reducing the number of convicts out there. So says the Associated Press:

"Prior to this fiscal crisis, legislators could tinker around the edges - but we're now well past the tinkering stage," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which advocates alternatives to incarceration.
"Many political leaders who weren't comfortable enough, politically, to do it before can now - under the guise of fiscal responsibility - implement programs and policies that would be win/win situations, saving money and improving corrections," Mauer said
In California, faced with a projected $42 billion deficit and prison overcrowding that has triggered a federal lawsuit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to eliminate parole for all offenders not convicted of violent or sex-related crimes, reducing the parole population by about 70,000. He also wants to divert more petty criminals to county jails and grant early release to more inmates - steps that could trim the prison population by 15,000 over the next 18 months.
In Kentucky, where the inmate population had been soaring, even some murderers and other violent offenders are benefiting from a temporary cost-saving program that has granted early release to nearly 2,000 inmates.
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is proposing early release of about 1,000 inmates. New York Gov. David Paterson wants early release for 1,600 inmates as well as an overhaul of the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws that impose lengthy mandatory sentences on many nonviolent drug offenders.
"These laws have neither curbed drug use nor enhanced public safety," said Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "Instead, they have ruined thousands of lives and annually wasted millions of tax dollars in prison costs."
Policy-makers in Michigan, one of four states that spend more money on prisons than higher education, are awaiting a report later this month from the Council of State Governments' Justice Center on ways to trim fast-rising corrections costs, likely including sentencing and parole modifications.
"There's a new openness to taking a look," said state Sen. Alan Cropsey, a Republican who in the past has questioned some prison-reform proposals. "What we'll see are changes being made that will have a positive impact four, five, six years down the road."
Even before the recent financial meltdown, policy-makers in most states were wrestling with ways to contain corrections costs. The Pew Center's Public Safety Performance Project has projected that state and federal prison populations - under current policies - will grow by more than 190,000 by 2011, to about 1.7 million, at a cost to the states of $27.5 billion.
"Prisons are becoming less and less of a sacred cow," said Adam Gelb, the Pew project's director. "The budget crisis is giving leaders on both sides of the aisle political cover they need to tackle issues that would be too tough to tackle when budgets are flush."
In contrast to past economic downturns, Gelb said, states now have better data on how to effectively supervise nonviolent offenders in their communities so prison populations can be reduced without increasing the threat to public safety.

A source close to a well known Georgia conservative state senator sighs, "Things we wouldn't have even deigned to discuss as recently as last session are now options we may have to stomach, okay?" [Thus ended my long-distance interview with the law-n-order crew...Maryland governor and General Assembly folk weren't anxious to talk to me.]

Diversion, enhanced drug treatment, family therapy/intervention, transition training etc--that will help. It's beyond axiomatic that this is cheaper than incarceration. And what to do about criminals who aren't even citizens? Perhaps that should be a new use for Guantanamo. Would be poetic justice if you aren't a Castro fan. But maybe another sacred cow is needs be examined. The one saying we can't nip the problem in the bud, so to speak?

I met a Dr. Strangelove-type cat--no wheelchair but round shades and a bizarre accent he says is Scandinavian--at writers' event in New York a few weeks ago. He reads my books; he follows the blog. The mad scientist (social scientist) composes thriller & sci fi short fiction. But he's bona fide academic who teaches at a major university within the NY-NJ-CT region and advises on human resources issues of all things. My new pen pal asserts we should offer prisoners early release if they consent to sterilization. Male and female. And early release--even clemency--for those who consent to pharmaceutical and other medical, etc. research (including dangerous space and undersea exploration). Yep. He says money should be set aside to pay young girls--and even housing, tuition, etc. assistance-- in "at risk" neighborhoods etc. to use Norplant and Depro. And extensive cultural interventions to keep the latinas from getting pregnant--like money or US citizenship in return for some tied tubes?

Mengele stuff, yes Lord. Scary. But...?

Listen, this might get traction. Stranger things have happened. I never thought I'd see a day when there'd be (1) a black president, period, and (2) hardcore Republican state legislators (who usually make the GOP pols in Congress look like Oxford dons) supporting all kinds of prison reform. Maybe this track--the mad scientist & eugenics track, will be a norm one day? Anything's possible, and we're running out of alternatives. Our president says "No excuses." Your thoughts?