How unions’ negotiating rights are affected by legislative bill.

IT’S BEEN a refrain used often enough when debating the subject: Prison is for people we’re scared of, not mad at. Which brings us to Jonathan Dismang and his Senate Bill 300: It would crack down on repeat offenders by denying them parole when caught committing yet another crime with a gun.

“These are people we should be scared of,” Sen. Dismang said.

SB300 would eliminate parole for repeat criminals who commit their crimes while armed. Once convicted of the new charge, they could face 20 years in prison if this bill becomes law.

Of course, when you add that kind of time to the law books, costs increase. Solomon Graves, the state’s Corrections secretary, said the state could be on the hook for another $250 million over 10 years if the bill passes. (NB: John Moritz’ story says the secretary emphasized he wasn’t speaking for or against the bill; just making the costs clear.)

“I just hope everyone understands on the front end that there’s going to have to be a discussion about capacity on the back end,” Secretary Graves said. The state needs responsible agency leaders like him, just to make things clear to lawmakers and the rest of us.

But it doesn’t take much searching to discover why this bill should be passed. Right next to the story about SB300 in Tuesday’s paper was another: about the park shootings in Little Rock over the past week. One shooting killed a 10-year-old girl.

We’re not jurors and we’re not investigators. Heck, we’re not even reporters. Everything we know we learn from the papers. (Rogers, W.) But certain suspects in these shootings have been alleged to have had more such incidents in their pasts. We refer you to the stories by the real reporters.

If the state finds its needs more space, more cells, more prisons to house the especially dangerous, what better use than the federal stimulus money flooding the state? Arkansas scarcely knows what to do with these millions. If the state would necessarily take on more operations expenses with more prisons, at least building them would count as one-time, non-recurring expenses.

Prison isn’t the answer to all that ails us. But it’s the only option for some who would hurt us.