Full-some prison blues

America is now synonymous with two things: McDonald's and people in prison.\nWe always knew about the first. The second came when the U.S. Department of Justice said last month there were over 2 million American citizens incarcerated somewhere in the country. That puts the United States at the top of prison population per capita in the world and home to 25 percent of the world's prison population.\nPrisons around the country are overcrowding far past the point of bursting at the seams.\nBut as more criminals flow through the system than ever before, the crime rate across the country continues to decline, reaching pre-Watergate lows.\nWhat gives is that in the interim, states have enacted a wave of mandatory minimum laws that force criminals into jail where other forms of adjudication were preferred by prosecutors and judges. \nFor instance, Indiana, along with 44 other states, has set a mandatory minimum jail sentence for a second DUI/DWI offense. That means anyone convicted on a second drunk driving charge will be forced into jail regardless of the circumstances for some time -- most states settle on 48 hours.\nThese minimums have eliminated plea bargaining from the process.\nAnd now at least three Supreme Court justices think they're hampering the judicial process and clogging jails and prisons uselessly.\nSupreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy joined Justices Breyer and Renquist last week telling a House sub-committee that mandatory minimums have a downside that legislators didn't intend on.\n"You'll have a young man, and he shouldn't be doing this, but he's raising marijuana in the woods. That makes him a distributor," Kennedy said. "And he's got his dad's hunting rifle in the car, he forgot about it and he wants to do target practice, that makes him armed. He's looking at 15 years. An 18-year-old doesn't know how long 15 years is. And it's not so much the sentencing guidelines, it's the mandatory minimums. That's the problem."\nGetting tough looks good on political advertisements.\nBut, from a practical standpoint, it's helping bankrupt states.\nMichigan became the first state nationwide to repeal its mandatory minimum laws, releasing 355 prisoners since March 1, a number that could balloon into the thousands by year's end. The repeal, which would save taxpayers about $41 million, could also wane capacity concerns in Michigan's prison system.\nWhile Michigan is saving money in its system, Gov. Frank O'Bannon proposes increasing our state's prisons budget to help meet the high overhead costs of housing prisoners -- at the sake of keeping education spending stagnant.\nO'Bannon said there was no other way. \nApparently, he hasn't been paying attention. \n-- Aaron Sharockman for the Editorial Board