It is the most expensive option, with prisons costing tens of millions of dollars to build.

But when state Rep. Ronnie Sutton, a Pembroke Democrat, challenged his colleagues Thursday at a meeting of House and Senate budget committees to consider a different course, lawmakers burst out laughing.

Sutton suggested that lawmakers put more money into prevention instead of incarceration and asked, "Is there anyone who thinks that we are going to change our mode of operation?"

After the laughter died down, Demo-cratic Rep. Mickey Michaux of Durham suggested that Sutton had his answer.

Susan Katzenelson, executive director of the N.C. Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission, which tracks the prison population and develops proposals for dealing with it, has seen the same debate play out before.

North Carolina's prison population is expected to hit 40,000 inmates next year, according to estimates by the commission. State officials say growth in prison population is largely due to growth in the overall state population.

But the state already has more inmates than it can house. Prisons director Boyd Bennett said Thursday that he recently sent notice to county jails that they will have to hold recently convicted inmates until the state's latest prison opens in Columbus County in late summer.

Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison said he already has 10 inmates awaiting assignment to a state prison. With 1,250 inmates in the Wake County jail, Harrison frequently has to give inmates bedrolls to sleep on the floor because of a shortage of beds.

"Naturally, we want to keep them moving," Harrison said. "But we do understand."

In Durham, jailers were asked several weeks ago to stop sending most convicts to state prisons.

There is still room at the 736-bed jail. On Thursday morning, the population was 629.

"If it lasts the whole summer, it's going to be an issue," said Maj. Julian Couch, director of programs administration at the jail. "But we've done it before, and we're going to do it again."

The 1,500-bed prison in Columbus County -- the sixth and most recent to be authorized in the past seven years -- is just a temporary fix. Four years down the road, state officials estimate the prison system will be over capacity by more than 1,800 inmates.

Doug Holbrook, a fiscal analyst for the legislators, told lawmakers Thursday that they had a handful of options to address the problem: Spend up to $120 million to expand prison capacity, reduce criminal sentences to eliminate the need for 1,000 beds by 2013, or some combination of both. Gov. Mike Easley has proposed borrowing $63 million this year, without voter approval, to add a total of 1,500 beds at four state prisons.

Meanwhile, the Department of Correction's budget has grown to more than $1.2 billion, or six percent of the state's $20.7 billion budget.

But legislation to reduce criminal sentences has languished. Three bills that together could have provided the 1,000-bed reduction failed to get out of either chamber last year, making them technically dead for this session.

No lawmakers at Thursday's budget committee meeting expressed interest in such a step, though Rep. Annie Mobley, an Ahoskie Democrat, suggested they look at Texas' efforts to curb a growing prison population.

Texas and other states in recent years have expanded community monitoring programs and provided more help for inmates making the transition back to society, according to a recent report by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

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