Indiana Department of Correction officials say that with the state's prisons at 99 percent of capacity, the state needs more prison space.

Well, that's one way of looking at the problem.

Inmates are sleeping in beds stacked three high in one prison, the Associated Press reported recently, and state prison officials are considering renovating areas like gymnasiums into cells.

Gov. Mitch Daniels had proposed expanding two prisons to add 1,200 beds, but that was dropped from the budget approved Tuesday as an olive branch from Daniels to the House Democrats.

Indiana's growth rate for the prison population is about 4 percent a year. Perhaps there's a way to slow that rate. How many inmates really need to be locked up?

In Indiana, according to a Pew Center on the States report released this year, 1 in 26 adults is under correctional control, either behind bars, on probation or on parole. One in 111 Hoosier adults was in jail or prison at the end of 2007.

That is not as bad as the national average, but there's still room for improvement.

The Pew report said the $669 million spent on corrections ate up 5.3 percent of the general fund in fiscal year 2008.

At $54.28 per day to feed and house an inmate, incarceration is costly. The amount spent to keep a person in prison for a single day could pay for 19 days of supervision under parole.

There are, of course, people who absolutely need to be locked up because they pose a danger to others. Violent criminals? Absolutely! Nonviolent crime? Perhaps not.

Indiana is better than most states about using community corrections and alternative sentencing, which are far cheaper than prison. Convicted criminals typically pay fees that substantially or completely cover the cost of monitoring.

Instead of adding prison space, Indiana officials should look at increasing the use of alternative sentencing to reduce the prison population. Violent offenders, of course, must be behind bars. But not all of the current inmates need to be locked up.

The current financial straits pose an opportunity to rethink how criminals are treated.