DATE: Saturday, August 30, 1997             TAG: 9708290031

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B6   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   44 lines

VIRGINIA PRISONERS: IT'S A CRIME CANDIDATE GILMORE'S PLAN MIGHT DEFRAY HIGH COST OF PRISON, BUT RECIDIVISM COULD INCREASE

When gubernatorial hopeful James S. Gilmore III says prisoners should pay their debt to society, he isn't kidding. Unfortunately.

Gilmore would bill prisoners for the cost of their incarceration and would do everything from impounding assets to garnishing future wages to make sure that the tab is paid.

That's an appealing notion until you start computing the cost of keeping someone in prison - about $40 a day, almost $150,000 over 10 years - and the earning potential of many of those who wind up in the slammer.

According to the National Institute of Corrections, an arm of the U.S. Justice Department, the reading level of the typical inmate in many states is 6th grade. About two-thirds of prisoners are unemployed at the time of arrest.

You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip, but you can crush the turnip trying. Ex-convicts face enormous odds when they leave prison. Forever keeping them under the yoke of past mistakes might make a dent on the prison tab. But it seems just as likely to do the opposite by boosting the recidivism rate.

If you're doomed never to get ahead, why try?

A number of states have ventured down the prisoner-pay route in recent years. While they've netted some return for their effort, their experience casts doubt on Gilmore's prediction that the state could recover about 20 percent of the annual operating costs of prisons and jails.

His estimate would put an extra $140 million in state coffers. Yet, in what Missouri officials call their best effort ever, the state collected just about $140,000 from prisoner assets and payments last year.

There may be some appropriate formula by which prisoners, particularly the well-off, could contribute more to the cost of their incarceration. But the plan sketched by Gilmore is too far-reaching. If a tough background is strike one and a prison term is strike two, then expecting miscreants to shoulder the cost of their incarceration even after they have served their time could be strike three.

Except in the most severe cases, making a mistake shouldn't mean that you're forever ``out'' of the ballgame. The Gilmore plan isn't likely to deter crime or rehabilitate those who have committed it. But it may actually be calculated to achieve a different purpose - to win Gilmore a few votes.

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