(A) A need exists for careful planning to expand local detention and correctional facilities to enable local governments adequately to incarcerate offenders who are awaiting trial or serving sentences of imprisonment at the local level. At the same time, South Carolina faces a critical need for more prison space to accommodate the projected increase in the inmate population. At a time when the state’s prisons are becoming increasingly overcrowded, budgetary resources are becoming more limited and the future availability of capital improvement bonds for more prison construction is uncertain.

(B) To ensure that adequate space is available in state corrections facilities for violent and habitual offenders, a need exists for additional community correctional facilities to enable courts to sentence nonviolent offenders to these less costly community correctional facilities which enable the offenders to make restitution payments and otherwise compensate the community for their crimes and which require participation in programs emphasizing substance abuse, education, and mental health counseling.

(C) The need exists for South Carolina to create a plan from which the State can establish a partnership with local governments to meet the corrections and incarceration needs of local governments and the State by offering less costly facilities for housing state and local inmates in alternative sentencing programs.