FRANKFORT — A couple of demented provisions in House Republicans’ sweeping rewrite of Kentucky’s criminal code — jailing the homeless and unleashing vigilante justice on suspected shoplifters — are bad enough in themselves.

They also seem to be the shiny new objects distracting from other, far-reaching questions about House Bill 5.

Kentuckians deserve answers, but the Republicans who control the legislature haven’t even started asking the questions, at least not publicly.?

How many new prison beds would be needed for the inmate surge set off by HB 5? How many new prisons? Would the private prison industry be employed to relieve the strain?

Would prisons have to operate nursing homes due to the increase in geriatric inmates? How about the impacts on county governments? Would they have more pretrial defendants to house at the county’s expense while the new harsher penalties move convicted felons, paid for by the state, out of local jails into state prisons?

And what will all this cost taxpayers??

What is the price tag for locking up more Kentuckians and for many more years? What would be sacrificed to pay for HB 5? Would it be worth it?

None of these questions were even seriously debated in the House.

In fact, the House approved HB 5 before the estimates of its fiscal impact were complete and published. The legislature began requiring corrections impact statements years ago to get a handle on the snowballing price of piecemeal criminal code changes that, over time, had saddled Kentucky with a huge increase in incarceration costs.?

Since 1985, Kentucky’s population has grown by 22% while its incarcerated population has grown by 214%. The rate of violent crime is about what it was when many fewer Kentuckians were behind bars; we remain one of the safest states.?

The Department of Corrections is still working on an impact statement for HB 5 as it stands after Republican amendments approved by the House worsened its fiscal impacts. Thankfully, the House did drop the original bill’s death penalty for distributing fentanyl that causes a fatal overdose.

I’ve been reading the impact statements that are available. They don’t attempt? to estimate the total increase in inmates over time. Nor do they put any bottom-line numbers on the eventual costs to taxpayers.?

They do provide some useful — and concerning — information.

If HB 5 becomes law, early release would be greatly limited for those convicted of violent crimes; also the definition of violent crime would be expanded to include more offenses. Instead of becoming eligible for parole after serving 20% of their sentences, violent offenders would have to serve 85% of their sentences. About 1 in 5 state prison inmates were classified as violent offenders in 2022.?

On average this higher bar for parole correlates with these additional costs per offender:?

• $554,833 or an additional 4,745 days for a Class A felon sentenced to 20 years or more.
• $416,154 or an additional 3,559 days for a Class B felon sentenced to 10-20 years.
• $277,475 or an additional 2,373 days for a Class C felon sentenced to 5-10 years.?
• $138,679 or an additional 1,186 days for a Class D felon sentenced to 1-5 years.

Remember, six-figure spending is PER OFFENDER. Incarceration is breathtakingly expensive.

And then there’s this: “With longer incarceration times, the challenge of reentry back into the community will become more difficult.” HB 5 will accelerate the revolving door of recidivism. It will sideline more Kentuckians from ever participating in the economy.

And, yet, champions of HB 5 voice some of the loudest complaints about Kentucky’s low workforce participation rate.?

But, then again, maybe I’m looking at this all wrong.

Maybe elected officials see increased incarceration as an economic opportunity. A new extractive industry: Lock up more Kentuckians, and more Kentuckians get jobs tending the incarcerated.?

I realize that’s deeply cynical but it’s also been a reality for decades as Appalachian communities welcomed federal and state prisons as an economic boon only to remain about as poor as ever.?

Which is not to say there’s not money to be made off mass incarceration.?

CoreCivic, the nation’s largest private prison company, didn’t pump $440,000 into the governor’s race and isn’t employing seven registered legislative lobbyists in Kentucky for altruistic reasons.

The House included $29 million in its budget (money not requested by Gov. Andy Beshear) to study building a new prison, which makes you wonder, if it costs $29 million to study, how much would it cost to build??

It could take years for HB 5’s costs to be fully felt. So, sure, politicians, thinking no further than their next election, find it easy to exploit fears of crime while saddling future generations with unknown but, we can assume, substantial costs.?

Here’s hoping cooler, more sensible heads prevail in the Senate.?

Lawmakers surely will drop the odious criminalization of homelessness and shopkeeper vigilantism. Even so, HB 5 should not slip into statute without a full accounting of its costs.

The percentage increases in Kentucky population and incarceration have been updated to correct errors in the original version.