The usual response to any extremely unacceptable behavior – a 12th drunken driving conviction, a fatal accident caused by a driver whose license has been suspended numerous times, sexual abuse of a child, drug possession – is to put the person in jail, preferably for a long time. The result, as lawmakers reiterated Thursday, is overcrowded prisons and jails. There are two ways to solve the overcrowding problem: More prisons can be built, and lawmakers can reconsider how often and for how long people are sentenced to jail. Neither is popular and one does not negate the other, but the debate is necessary and overdue.

A recent report by the Corrections Alternatives Advisory Committee notes that the large increase in the number of inmates is the result of more people being sentenced to jail and staying longer, not because of an increase in crime. Mandatory jail sentences worsen the problem. In the past 20 years, the average daily population at state prisons had risen 71 percent. It has gone up 173 percent at county jails. In 2004, Maine spent more than $127 million, not including debt service, to operate its prisons and county jails.

Members of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee warned Thursday that the number of inmates in the state’s eight detention facilities would soon surpass cell capacity. By the end of the year, the state’s prison population is expected to reach nearly 2,200. Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson said the state’s inmate population is projected to grow by 125 to 150 prisoners a year through 2011. Having inmates sleep on floors, which is already occurring at some facilities, or crowded into cells, puts them and prison officials at risk. It also puts the state at risk for lawsuits.

Pointing out the problem is helpful; offering solutions must soon follow.

The first reaction when someone commits a serious crime is to put them in jail. Treatment is a secondary consideration, says Sen. Bill Diamond, co-chair of the Criminal Justice Committee. Maine and the nation’s prison overcrowding cannot be meaningfully diminished without also dealing with mental health. With the closing of state mental health facilities and the downsizing of others, jails have become the holding pens for people who need treatment not incarceration. Nationally, correctional facilities house eight times as many mentally ill people as do state psychiatric facilities. Compounding the problem is that well over half of inmates have drug and alcohol abuse problems, making jails detoxification facilities too.

Differentiating between offenders to determine who must be locked up and who can receive treatment in an alternative setting is a first step to lessening the crowding problem. This will be politically difficult because it is hard to advocate for lesser jail sentences or jail alternatives. It is necessary, however, because harsh sentences for drug arrests, for example, have done little to curb the state’s drug problem.

The state’s drug courts, and other alternative sentencing programs that require treatment and monitoring instead of incarceration, offer a promising avenue.

What lawmakers don’t need to do is study this problem. It has already heard from the Alternatives Advisory Committee and three years earlier from the Commission to Improve Sentencing, Supervision, Management and Incarceration of Prisoners.

It is time for the difficult work of finding solutions.