
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 14, 1994                   TAG: 9409140018
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

CRIME FACTS

In 1992, after five years of stepped-up prison construction, Texas had beds for 52,000 inmates and an incarceration rate of 553 prisoners for every 100,000 residents. That rate is expected to almost double by the year 2000, when the system will house 206,000.

Prison construction has become such a priority in Texas that twice this year legislators have approved taking $100 million chunks of funding away from other state programs to spend on corrections.

Last year, 56 percent of Texas voters rejected a referendum on borrowing $750 million to build schools. A few months later, 70 percent of Texas voters approved borrowing $1 billion to build prisons.

In Oregon, a petition earlier this year to send all felony property crime offenders to prison - at an estimated cost of $300 million a year, or $100 per person - didn't attract enough signatures to get on the ballot for a statewide referendum.

When the Oregon legislature voted to add $10 million to its corrections budget last year, the corrections director pledged to shift $7 million into community-based education, counseling and probationary programs designed to serve as alternatives to prison.

by CNB