Voters Don’t Want To Pay Crime Costs Many Want Tough Penalties, Not More Prisons, Poll Finds
A majority of Washington voters want criminals to spend more time behind bars, but they don’t want to spend the millions of dollars needed to build and guard more prisons.
“Take out the TVs and pool halls. Give them a cot to sleep in and a can to pee in,” said Cricket Hamilton, 44, a search-and-rescue officer in Olympia. “A lot of released prisoners want to go back. They get three or four meals a day. It’s a little too easy in there.”
The collision between public safety and public spending is among several findings of a survey gauging voters’ views in this year’s gubernatorial election. The poll of 556 registered voters was conducted for The Associated Press and 12 newspapers in the state.
Conducted at the end of April, the survey found that 79.5 percent of respondents agreed there should be stronger penalties for criminals. But the poll also found that 56.8 percent disagreed with the notion that the state should spend more money for prisons.
The poll, with a margin of error of less than plus or minus 4.3 percentage points, also found:
About 64 percent of voters feel less safe than they did four years ago.
About 79 percent blame deteriorating social values and 53 percent say lenient courts contribute to the crime problem.
Only 30 percent think criminals younger than 18 should be exempt from the death penalty.
A minority view holds that the state is putting too many people in prison for too long.
“I don’t think putting everybody in jail is necessarily the answer … They’re building all these prisons to warehouse people, and it’s overloading the court system,” said Dorothy Ainslie, 71, of Spokane. “You have to divide crimes into different categories (of seriousness) rather than just misdemeanors and felonies.”
State Rep. Ida Ballasiotes, R-Mercer Island, is a veteran of the debate over crime and punishment as chairwoman of the House Corrections Committee.
“It’s the classic clash of values,” she said. “People want us to do everything we can about crime, but they also don’t want to pay the cost.”
The state Department of Corrections operating budget, nearly $735 million for the current two-year budget period, is expected to swell to $1 billion by decade’s end to accommodate an inmate population now at 12,000 and growing fast. Ten years ago, the population was about 5,500. It is expected to rise to 14,000 by 2000, corrections officials say.
The department has spent more than $600 million on new facilities and repair and maintenance for existing facilities over the last dozen years. An estimated $403 million will be needed by the end of the decade.
With all the prison growth, though, voters feel more vulnerable to crime than they did four years ago.
“I feel less safe. It might be because I pay more attention to it,” said Ann Muenchow, 43, a Seattle social worker and horticulturist.
Actually, the rate for serious crime in Washington in 1994, the most recent figures available, was down by 2 percent from 1985 when adjusted for population growth, according to figures from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.