EDITOR:

According to an August 12th Daily Press report, three drug dealer/manufacturers with previous felony convictions were sentenced to 3.5 to 20, 3.1 to 12 and 4 to 20 years in prison.

The sentencing judge said, “The common denominator with each of these three unrepentant drug dealers is greed. Their sentences needed to reflect the seriousness of their offenses as well as their habitual criminality. The only thing that can stop some people is a prison sentence, because the citizens of our community are simply not safe with these defendants producing and purveying their pernicious poison.”

There’s another common denominator: it’s going to cost a bunch to imprison these characters. At $35,000 a year, the average cost of prison incarceration in Michigan, it will cost us taxpayers a minimum of $367,500 and a maximum of $1,820,000.

Instead of spending these tax dollars on productive things, like roads or schools, we’ll spend it on ineffective incarceration; “ineffective” because the recidivism rate for this “unrepentant” bunch will likely be 100% within a few years of getting out of prison in part because the most impactful instruction they receive in prison is from other prisoners, who teach them how to be a better criminal.

A much less costly alternative to prison and an alternative with a likely lower recidivism rate is long (e.g. 12 or 20 years with this bunch) term day reporting, particularly for drug offenses. The convict must report to a county day reporting center daily, take a drug test, stay employed or work without pay in the county’s work camp, submit to random home inspections and attend county day reporting classes designed to fix the causes of their criminal behavior. The convicts can fully cooperate or go to prison long enough to appreciate the day reporting alternative, their choice.

Abraham Maslow said in 1966, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” We need more effective and less costly alternatives to prisons and jails.

Bob Mammel

Masonville Township