New jails are popping up in New Hampshire.
The newest one is about to open in Boscawen, where Merrimack County has constructed a new, 300 bed facility.
Several other counties have either opened new jails, or are planning to build one.
And the state opened a new prison just five years ago in Berlin.
And that has not relieved the need for even more space.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman has more.
Merrimack County's new, 24 million dollar jail sits right next to its present facility in Boscawen.
The new building is almost 4 times bigger than its predecessor.
Carole Anderson is the County's Correction Commissioner.
She says the new jail has long been necessary, because the old one is just too crowded.
the present facility was built in 1983. and it was built to hold 72 inmates. we weren't in that building a year, year and a half, when it was obvious it was too small. so we've lived with that building for over 20 years with populations that have ranged from 99 to 200. and the last few years, certainly closer to 200 than to 99.
No prisoners have been moved to the new jail yet.
They're due to arrive sometime next month.
Not too long ago, Strafford County went through a similar experience.
Last July, the county opened a new 21 million dollar jail in Dover.
It can hold nearly 400 prisoners.
Raymond Bower is the county administrator.
our original jail was built in 1985 and that was built for 68 inmates. our average inmate population as 1990 approached was about 120. and despite our efforts to utilize some community relief programs, our population continued to grow into the 140's. so we weren't able to properly manage our inmate population with the size of the jail we had.
Carroll County recently opened a new jail that holds 73 prisoners.
It cost about 10 million dollars.
And Cheshire County is planning to build one.
But the counties aren't alone.
In the state system, the number of inmates has ballooned from around 300 in the 1980's to more than two-thousand, five hundred this year.
That's 8 times as many prisoners in 2005 than twenty years earlier.
But while the state's overall population has grown over time, it has not even doubled in 20 years.
Katie Merrow is with the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies.
She says there's no single answer to why the state has seen such tremendous growth in its prison population.
...and i'm not trying to be coy, i'm just telling you there's a number of theories. but, there's been an increase in the number of people arrested and sent to prison for a variety of crimes. drug and alcohol related crimes have been a huge piece of it, but by no means the only piece.....
Some corrections officials say mandatory minimum sentencing is also part of the reason.
About half of the inmates are in a state prison because they violated their parole.
This may be part of the reason why the men's prison in Concord is so heavily overpopulated.
Commissioner Stephen Curry says nearly 1300 prisoners are crammed into a space that was designed to hold less than one thousand.
And that's after the state opened a 500 bed facility in Berlin five years ago.
He says he's urging the Legislature to ease the overcrowding, by enlarging the Berlin facility.
....in my view, the first step of any future expansion program in the state system would necessarily include a discussion of when is the appropriate time, and i didn't say if, i said when is the appropriate time to expand that facility to its design capacity of 1000 beds.
The cost of adding on to the Berlin prison could be as much or more than the twenty-something million dollars Merrimack and Strafford Counties spent to construct new jails.
And taxpayers are already paying about 75 dollars a day to take care of each inmate in state facilities.
The counties spend about 65 dollars a day on each inmate.
Despite the seemingly high numbers, the National Institute of Corrections says that New Hampshire's incarceration rate was one of the lowest in the country in 2003.
The incarceration rate total for state and county prisoners was about half the national average.
Alan Elsner wrote a book about the nation's prisons called "The Gates of Injustice? The Crisis in American Prisons"
He says New Hampshire and a few other states have long resisted incarcerating every offender.
But Elsner says that's starting to change.
one of the least encouraging signs that i've seen in the latest statistics is that some of the states with the lowest incarceration rates are now some of the fastest growing states in terms of their prison populations so they seem to catching up with the others. and i find that very discouraging...
Elsner says states would do better to use alternative sentencing like ankle bracelets for non-violent offenders.
Those who serve time this way can often go to work and lead a life that's somewhat normal.
Some counties are already using this kind of sentencing.
It saves space in their jails.
