MISSOURI WATCH: SOMETHING IS AMISS. ANY THOUGHTS?

For the next few minutes, let's discuss a disturbing trend in our state that has nothing to do with what's happening at this moment in our state Capitol or who is running for what state office 20 minutes form now or how the Cardinals and Royals will fare this season. As vital as these issues may be to each of us, they pale in importance to a problem that is at least partially hidden by political forces and public indifference and/or lack of information.

You see out mutual problem isn't so pervasive that we are willing to attack it with effective strategies that promise remedies. It's more or less hidden, kept under wraps because it is usually included on a list of societal dilemmas but seldom placed on the agenda for public study and discussion.

The problem starts with the most recent report of the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics in Washington, a report which highlights, as so many do not, a critical but dormant problem within the confines of the Show-Me State. The BJS study notes that the great state of Missouri has the highest prison incarceration rate of any state in the Middle West. As a matter of fact, there are only 10 states, almost all of them south of the Mason-Dixon line, that have a higher rate of its citizens in penitentiaries than does Missouri.

The justice study places Missouri just below such enlightened states as Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana in the percentage of citizens behind prison bars, while ranking well ahead of our neighboring states including Illinois, Kansas, Iowa and Arkansas. As for Minnesota, we are imprisoning our citizens at a rate that is five times greater than the state being run these days by a former professional wrestler.

I've always thought of myself as a kind of law-and-order guy, as I believe most Missourians are, and I've generally supported every effort offered to restore safety to our neighborhoods, towns and cities. This, after all, is one index of our civilized society and if residents are frightened to venture outside their homes and if some live in perpetual fear of injury or robbery, we have somehow failed them.

And this, after all, is what has motivated the huge increases in incarceration rates since the 1980s, when American finally awakened to the fact that it had become one of the most violent countries in the world, a far cry from the Norman Rockwell vision of unlocked homes and tranquil neighborhoods.

But what is proving troublesome today is that despite a national drop in crimes committed, we are sending more and more men and women to prison for longer and longer terms. This solution, if indeed it is that, flies in the face of recognition that the chance of successful rehabilitation behind bars is all but impossible, usually occurring only in rare instances through factors other than time served.

Despite recent reductions in criminal activity in both Missouri and the nation as a whole, our prisons are filling up at rates that were unheard of two decades ago. We're filling up our prisons because they are there -- and when we run out of institutions, we seem determined to build more.

We already have 16,000 more men and women in the Department of Corrections' Probation and Parole section than we have enrolled in Missouri's community colleges. A further index is that we now have more employees in the state prison agency than we have to treat the 110,000 patients of the Department of Mental Health. One more fact you need to know: our state is spending $200 million more under the general heading of public safety than we are allocating to treat 35,000 persons afflicted with alcoholism and drug abuse.

I'm not at all certain these facts point to an obvious solution to the problem that's been outlined above; at least they don't exacerbate it, but Missouri is faced with a dilemma that will impact the future of its citizens, so perhaps we had better start worrying before we find ourselves face to face with an Occam's razor that provides no alternative save draconian remedies and substantially higher taxation.

For starters, let's expand the efforts now being made by Corrections Department director Dr. Dorna Schriro, whose programs have accomplished a deceleration into prison cells, and whose efforts to expand inmate education and work programs have received national attention and recognition. These programs have only been as effective as the funding has allowed and they deserve far more support than they have received from most of the state's political sources. Apparently some politicians feel that if they support these programs, they will somehow be categorized as "soft on crime," a view which may help explain Missouri's dangerous and humiliating incarceration record.

Secondly, let's turn the Mental Health Department's Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse from a spectator to a participant in the fight against substance illnesses. The agency has long been treated as a stepchild of mental health and one that depended primarily on federal grants for its existence. Missouri taxpayers have historically paid little to nothing to support and expand this highly critical key to both public safety and public health. Continued neglect, and a failure to expand services into crime-ridden neighborhoods and regions, will only give citizens more of the same addiction rates.

Thirdly, societal crime is often viewed as the problem of someone else: police, prosecuting attorneys, parole officers, sheriffs, state police, et al. But crime that puts at risk our own lives and the lives of our loved ones is our problem as well. Citizens should be participating in local and state initiatives that challenge each of us to do our share and to make a time contribution that will create community-sponsored crime-fighting programs.

These are just starters. I'll bet you could supply still other suggestions. After all, it's your problem now.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.