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Can a State Go Bankrupt?

By Michael Connelly

Treatment is sought for addictsSTATE BANKRUPTING ITSELF BY JAILING THEM, PANEL TOLDState officials are asking Gov. Steve Beshear and the legislature to consider steering criminal suspects with addiction problems into intensive treatment rather than a jail cell.Kentucky is bankrupting itself by imprisoning drug addicts and alcoholics, lawmakers were told Thursday."We have too many people in jails, too many people in prisons," state Justice Secretary J. Michael Brown told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Our capacity to care for them has been strained to the limit."The state is poorly served by locking up street-level addicts, Brown added."I don't think we're getting the worst drug lords into the prisons. We're just getting the people who went out and got caught," he said...continue to full post

Full post as published by Corrections Sentencing on January 29, 2008 (boomark / email).