Jack Wagner

PITTSBURGH — Pennsylvania needs to stop building new prisons, lower its inmate population by using alternative punishments for nonviolent offenders, and reverse a trend that has tripled its per-inmate spending over the past three decades, Auditor General Jack Wagner said Friday.

“We need to draw a line in the sand going forward regarding building new prisons,” Wagner said.

Wagner, a Democrat and former state senator from Pittsburgh, was joined by Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, and Sen. Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, at CMU’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, where researchers believe incarcerating only the most violent criminals is better for inmates and society, and makes more fiscal sense in a state with a looming $4 billion to $5 billion budget deficit.

“The statistics are overwhelming and you have to look at them to appreciate the problem,” Wagner said.

The key numbers are these: Pennsylvania’s inmate population grew more than six-fold from about 8,200 in 1980 to about 51,500 last year while spending per inmate over the same period has increased from roughly $11,400 to more than $32,000.

Wagner is targeting roughly 19,000 inmates, or 39 percent, who are imprisoned for nonviolent offenses. He’d like to see that number halved through overhauled sentencing practices and other changes in a bill Greenleaf currently has before the Senate Judiciary Committee he chairs.

A former Montgomery County prosecutor, Greenleaf said other states cited in Wagner’s report like California, Michigan, New York, Maryland and Texas have reduced inmate populations and cut costs by measures including renovating existing prisons instead of building new ones, scaling back mandatory sentences — especially for drug offenses — and developing prison alternatives for nonviolent offenders. Greenleaf’s legislation would reduce the time some nonviolent offenders spend in the state system, encourage nonprofits and faith-based rehabilitation programs, and reform parole rules so people are not imprisoned for lesser violations.

Spokeswoman Susan Bensinger said the Department of Corrections is already “working very diligently on a lot of things he is proposing.” The state is expanding an intermediate punishment program and a program that gives inmates who are at low risk for recidivism reduced sentences for participating in treatment and behavioral programs.