Feb. 23, Washington state's Department of Corrections (DOC) released 82 convicts solely because there was no place for them in the prisons. The felons' convictions included a mix of assault, burglary, rape, drug crimes and even one for kidnapping. Although this was the largest number of felons released in one day, the DOC has been releasing convicts due to space-related issues on a regular basis and continues to do so.

Gov. Chris Gregoire admitted that she was "shocked" to learn the DOC was releasing convicts because there was "no place in the inn." What I find shocking is that she is so out of touch with our crime problems that she didn't even know it has been a serious issue since Gary Locke was governor.

Although Gregoire's leadership through the crisis has been harder to follow than a rabbit with two heads, the real issue is what to do with all of our convicts. The typical liberal response is that people commit crime because of poverty and addictions. The issue is ignorance, and we need to be sympathetic to people who don't have the same advantages as the rest of society. Therefore, the criminal should be fixed, not punished.

Gregoire confirmed this view when she said to The Associated Press, "We don't get them the education they need ... We don't get them the drug and alcohol treatment they need. So after housing them, we send them back out onto the street — and what would we expect?"

The fault in this argument is that even the best rehabilitation programs only increase success by 10 to 15 percent, according to a report by the Washington State Institute of Public Policy. With a 50-percent chance that they will commit crimes once released, 10 or 15 percent is not a large enough number to warrant the state funds dedicated to the programs.

Then the report also described these numbers as "a significant reduction but not a cure." Does that mean people don't choose their morality, but those who are immoral are simply diseased? This view is hypocritical to the rest of liberal thinking, which insists that people are capable of choosing their own moral standards — think about sex issues, drugs and abortion.

Conservatives agree that people can decide their own morality but digress in their willingness to say that there are bad people, and some people do such bad things they warrant prison time. The liberal hits a dilemma in admitting that people are bad, because this implies that some people aren't inherently good, which means there are groups of people who are unfit to make moral decisions. So prisons become rehabilitation centers for those who make ignorant decisions, and not a method of protecting society from evil.

According to the AP, the DOC releases 8,500 prisoners every year, typically after serving two-thirds of their sentences. This includes murderers, rapists and drug-pushers. With a 50-percent chance that they'll commit such atrocious crimes again, one wonders why they're so often released early on good faith. Perhaps there just isn't enough room in the inn.

The recent killing of three Seattle-area police officers by ex-cons pushed Gregoire to respond with more funds. However, most of her funding has gone into rehabilitation programs and tightening responses to parole violations. But Democrats are still pointing to her decision to build an 892-bed expansion in Walla Walla and a 1,792-bed expansion at Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Franklin County. This should create a place for the 1,000 Washington convicts who were sent to Minnesota and Arizona and the 1,000 prisoners kept in county jails. Spokesman Jeff Weathersby told the AP that the DOC only released 3,144 prisoners early last year. So optimistically, when the expansions are done by 2009, only about 2,400 convicts will need to be released early.

We should put what funds we can into building more prisons and more energy into keeping criminals off of the streets. We know it works, because it's the miracle Rudy Giuliani did in New York.

Everyone wants to hear conversion stories from criminals. Let us find hope in these things, but let's not depend on them. We need to be more than optimistic; we need to be consistent in our response to these criminals, and we need to tell the DOC to stop letting them out before their time is done.

Reach columnist Celeste Flint at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.