Mounting budget cuts may force the Mississippi Department ofCorrections to transfer non-violent offenders out of prison andinto house arrest programs, and that could be a good method for thestate to use, local legislators said Monday.

Brookhaven’s lawmakers proposed the idea while fielding a listof questions about the state’s budget woes at theBrookhaven-Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce’s quarterlymembership breakfast, touting the house arrest system as anaffordable and efficient option for reducing the state’s prisonoperation costs. The potential release of state inmates has becomea recurring question in the budget discussions, with around 54,000inmates in the system housed at an estimated cost of $14,000 perinmate per year.

“In my opinion, we don’t have enough inmates on house arrestbecause it’s so much cheaper and it works well,” said District 39Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, D-Brookhaven. “If we are faced withsomething, I like the house arrest program.”

Inmates on house arrest are detained in their homes rather thanin prison and issued with a tracking device – usually an anklebracelet – that tracks their locations. The system allows the stateto save on costs associated with housing, food, security and otherexpenses.

District 92 Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, said onlynon-violent first-time offenders should be eligible for housearrest. Besides alleviating some of MDOC’s budget concerns, thesystem would also be better for offenders’ rehabilitation, shesaid.

“If you put them in a cage at Parchman, they’re going to comeout violent,” Currie said.

Using house arrest instead of imprisonment may be one of the fewways to lower corrections’ spending, as Mississippi’s per inmatecosts are actually quite low when compared to what other statesspend. District 53 Rep. Bobby Moak, D-Bogue Chitto, pointed outMississippi generates revenue through contracts to houseout-of-state inmates, specifically mentioning a group of prisonersfrom Hawaii currently detained in the Delta.

“Any time a state sends their prisoners to Mississippi to havethem housed under contract, we’re cheaper than the state thoseprisoners came from,” Moak said.

Regardless of how MDOC funding is handled, the department isonly one of many facing funding shortages.

The current fiscal year 2010 budget is shaping up to be about$450 million short, and when work begins on the 2011 budget,lawmakers will attempt to close the gaps on an estimated $750million. The figure for the coming 2012 budget is short by $1.3billion.

All three lawmakers proposed a slow and steady approach to usingthe state’s Rainy Day fund, a point of partisanship year in andyear out, when questioned by Monday’s audience. The real point ofcontention is not whether the funds will be tapped, but what theywill be spent on, Moak said.

The first signs of contention appeared last week when Gov. HaleyBarbour vetoed a $79 million budget reconciliation act because itdid not adequately address prison funding.

Moak predicted the Legislature would adjourn for a few weeks atthe end of March to take a deep breath and get new revenueprojections before coming back in session to deal with thebudget.

“We’re just not very good right now at sitting down together andmoderating our differences,” he said. “It would not be bad for usto simply go home for a while.”

Lawmakers also lightly addressed a few other issues Monday.

Moak predicted that funding for district attorneys’ officeswould be provided so that assistant DAs would not have to be laidoff. The possibility has been of chief importance in lawenforcement circles.

Hyde-Smith, who serves on the committee looking at stateredistricting, said DeSoto County would likely gain another senatorand representative because of its population growth, but theLincoln County area would likely remain unchanged.

Lawmakers also received a standing ovation for the recent defeatof House Bill 599, which would have moved the Mississippi School ofthe Arts out of Brookhaven.