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Hubert H. Humphrey      Response 3

Question 3: Given Minnesota's climbing prison population, the public pressure to reduce taxes and an apparent stalemate in the war on drugs, how would you, as governor, balance the cost of criminal justice with the need to ensure the safety of Minnesotans?

I believe that Minnesota can reduce criminal justice costs 
without jeopardizing public safety in several ways. First, we 
need to redouble our efforts to make our prisons, our most 
expensive incarceration option, run as efficiently and 
effectively as possible.  Minnesota does not need the equivalent 
of a Cadillac prison system, when a Chevrolet will get us where 
we want to go. We can control prison costs, for example, by 
maximizing our ability to double-bunk prisoners and minimizing 
expensive frills. 

Moreover, prisoners can and should work while in prison, 
helping us to recoup some of the costs of incarceration. 
Because our first priority in making criminals pay is to ensure 
that their crime victims receive full compensation for the harm 
they have suffered, it is unrealistic to expect prisoners to 
finance their entire stay. But we certainly can expect 
incarcerated criminals to contribute financially while in 
prison. 

Second, we must preserve our prison spaces for those violent 
offenders who pose the biggest threats to public safety, and 
explore less expensive options to punish nonviolent offenders. 
Three such options are community courts, boot camp, and work 
camps. 

I am excited about community court pilot projects that will 
begin in 1999 in South Minneapolis and the metro area. 
Experience in Manhattan shows that these courts empower the 
communities that are directly impacted by crime by giving them 
a place to make their case against those that destroy 
neighborhoods. Offenders receive immediate sanctions for 
"livability" crimes, and the punishment restores what the 
offender has taken from the community.