Every year, Villanova law professor Steve Chanenson conducts a workshop on criminal sentencing in the unlikely setting of Philadelphia's Main Line. Each session is a three-day mix of criminal court judges, law students, prosecutors, defense attorneys, corrections experts and psychologists. Chanenson, a member of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing, is a nationally recognized expert on sentencing and has established a burgeoning think tank at Villanova. His workshop is an annual source of the kind of practical wisdom that comes only from folks who labor in the trenches. This gathering also is the mother lode of the oratorical gems that are woven through and around the criminal justice system. Consider this spiritual observation from one criminal courtroom vet: "If you are ever looking for the Lord, check the penitentiary. A lot of people seem to find him there." Then there is the rural jurist who has a special knack for no-nonsense justice. When considering a hypothetical sentence for a troubled young offender, this judge observed that a little fear sometimes works magic: "It won't hurt if his socks get a little wet." For the past couple of years, the group has been joined by Ralph Hendrix, the director of Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime, in Birmingham, Ala. Ralph looks and thinks like a professor but talks like a good ol' Southern boy. It's a potent combination. When describing the behavior of an older woman who seduced a juvenile male, Hendrix said she went after that boy "like a duck on a June bug." On another case, Hendrix reminded us of the old homicide justification defense that "some people just need killin'." But much of the time was spent exploring the less-deadly proposition that "some people just need jailin'." There now are 40,000-plus inmates in Pennsylvania prisons. Nonviolent offenders are the fastest-growing segment. Drug and alcohol abuse play a considerable role in most crime, yet our preferred punishment remains incarceration. And too frequently this is the cycle that incarceration has wrought: drug abusers in/drug abusers out. The average annual cost of incarceration in state prison is $31,300. That number soars to $63,500 for an infirm or geriatric prisoner on the long-term care unit at the Laurel Highlands correctional facility. For some reason, our system keeps prisoners locked up way past their criminal prime -- adding incredible health care expenses to the general maintenance costs that must be borne by state taxpayers. There is some hope for a more effective, less expensive and more realistic future. Through the efforts of Secretary of Corrections Jeff Beard and Montgomery County Sen. and Judiciary Committee Chairman Stewart Greenleaf, the state will soon be launching a hybrid form of punishment and treatment. The adoption of this enlightened approach required political skill and courage, since it seems to fly in the face of misinformed public sentiment. Too many public officials talk tough about crime -- without noting the price tag. Beard and Greenleaf have us positioned to try another strategy. As Hendrix put it to the group of Pennsylvanians, "You have to decide who you're scared of and who you're mad at." Those lawbreakers who scare you must be incarcerated; their lawbreaking ways warrant intensive care, expense be damned. As for those criminals whom we are simply mad at, there are far cheaper and more effective ways to get our pound of flesh. And even for the most inflexible law-and-order folks, the wise expenditure of public money should mean something. That is unless, as Hendrix says, we have "so much money that we could burn a wet mule."

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