Welcome to Prisonville, Ky.

In Tuesday's state budget briefings, Gov. Steve Beshear mentioned that the state's current prison population of 22,618 is expected to reach 23,953 by Fiscal Year 2010.

How many people is that?

If state prisoners all lived in one place rather than being scattered among 16 prisons and dozens of (mostly overcrowded) county jails, they would comprise Kentucky's 15th largest city, nestled between Elizabethtown (pop. 23,406) and Radcliff (pop. 21,652).

And that's just state prisoners, the folks who have been convicted in circuit courts of one or more felonies and are currently serving prison time.

If we include the 12,772 county jail inmates -- local folks who have been arrested but not convicted, or who were convicted of misdemeanors and are serving short sentences -- the total number of Kentuckians behind bars in the state justice system is 35,390.

That would make Prisonville, Ky., the state's sixth-largest city, behind Covington (pop. 42,797) but ahead of Richmond (pop. 31,431).

Not surprisingly, the Corrections Department is one of the few state agencies that did not suffer painful budget cuts in Beshear's two-year budget proposal. Its budget would fatten by 15 percent, rising from $417 million in FY 2008 to $478 million in FY 2010. A $40 million prison expansion is planned for the Little Sandy Correctional Complex in Elliott County.

-- John Cheves

Comments

[michael l. gevedon]

If this state wants to lession it's prison population we need to look at expungeing a class d felony after the person has been without crime for five years . All other states except one does this so these people can work at jobs that meet there potential. If this is not done they lose hope and return to crime.