Pubdate: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 Source: Huntsville Times (AL) Copyright: 2003 The Huntsville Times Contact: http://www.htimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/730 Author: Anthony McCartney Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) SENTENCING CHANGES 'DIRELY NEEDED' BUT TOO COSTLY Many Pushing Reforms To Reduce Overcrowding Tout Long-Term Savings MONTGOMERY - It's no mystery what Alabama could do to improve its criminal justice system, nor the reason the state can't do so now. The keys - more supervision, sentencing law changes, more community corrections options, transition and treatment centers for drug-addicted inmates - all require one thing Alabama doesn't have: money. Alabama's current sentencing structure, as well as its most "one-size-fits-all" punishment options - probation or prison - are largely blamed for the state's chronic prison overcrowding. The state is releasing thousands of prisoners, mostly drug and property offenders, through an expanded Board of Pardons and Paroles. The board's December docket, which is the first month a newly created second, three-member panel is meeting, includes more than 1,200 names. The Times reviewed 90 percent of the records for the eligible parolees, examining their charges, sentences and several other factors. More than 950 of the 1,138 eligible for parole are defendants who committed nonviolent offenses, as classified by the board and Legislature. Under the current system, people convicted of multiple felonies are usually sentenced to time in Alabama's prison system. While prison drug treatment programs are available, most have long waiting lists. Those who want sentencing and other reforms - groups that include Gov. Bob Riley, Pardons and Paroles, attorneys, judges and others - say having a variety of sentencing options besides prison is crucial to helping reduce the state's inmate population and preventing current parolees from continuing their criminal careers. One of the more promising options is the creation of transition centers, which would primarily serve people with substance abuse convictions. Drug offenses, and the various property crimes committed to feed addictions, account for the majority of inmates who are eligible for parole under the expanded parole docket. Pardons and Paroles plans to open several such centers around the state, using mainly institutions the state Mental Health Department closed this year in a cost-cutting move. The largest likely would be located at the closed campus of the Lurleen B. Wallace Developmental Center in Decatur, but it also would be the most expensive to operate. Pardons and Paroles received a $2 million conditional appropriation in the 2003-04 budget - money that has to be released by the governor but probably won't be because of the state's overwhelming financial problems. "It's direly needed," said Cynthia Dillard, assistant executive director of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. "I don't see the money being available. "It would be a money savings in the long run," she said. Riley said in an interview Friday that his office would continue to work with groups to try to provide more treatment options for offenders once the inmate population has been lowered. Riley said the state should have more options such as halfway houses and treatment centers, "especially for the juveniles who are being incarcerated into a prison system when, literally, what we should be doing is putting them into a treatment facility so that we can alter that recidivism rate." The Alabama Sentencing Commission, a body of lawyers, judges, prosecutors and others from the criminal justice field, will meet next month to decide which laws it thinks the Legislature should enact to help prisons and sentencing laws. Lynda Flynt, the commission's executive director, said several changes could help. Among the options: Raise the amount of marijuana that makes its possession a felony, and re-examine the state's habitual offender law, which mandates a defendant get increasingly stiffer minimum sentences with each new felony committed. Building more prisons won't help, she said. "From other states' experience," she said, "they fill them up." Michael Blain, a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute, recently presented legislators with a plan to reduce the number of inmates at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, one of the prisons under court order to reduce overcrowding. He said many of the women have been sentenced for having "dirty urine" tests, often while on parole for marijuana charges. Blain said those women should be placed in treatment programs, but the state doesn't spend enough money on such programs. The effort has to be pervasive - "treatment on the inside, treatment on the outside" - Blain said. "You can't just drop a person off and expect them to be OK." Rosa Davis, the state's chief assistant attorney general and a member of the Sentencing Commission, said for the criminal justice system to be effective, more tiers than just prison are needed. She called for varying levels of supervision, transition centers and "a prison that looks, walks and talks like a prison." Davis said although many Alabama prisoners probably could benefit from treatment options, some simply need to be in prison. "There's some really bad people in the world," Davis said. Still, "I don't think there's enough of those people in Alabama to have the incarceration rate we have." At the end of October, the state had 27,643 prisoners in a system designed for 12,378. One statute getting serious attention is Alabama's habitual offender law. Passed in the late 1970s and amended in 2000, the law provides escalating penalties for felony convictions. Part of the problem, Flynt said, is that the law doesn't take into consideration the severity of the previous convictions. That leaves the system clogged with petty thieves and low-level drug offenders, who account for 44 percent of the state's entire prison population, according to a Sentencing Commission report released last spring. The commission is studying how other states handle habitual offenders, in some states called "three strikes" laws. Davis said Alabamians need to consider whether some thieves and drug offenders could be punished or rehabilitated in other ways besides going to prison for long terms. Locking up petty thieves will ensure they don't break the law again back home, she said, but "how much is that worth to society?" Davis said she doesn't know the answer to many of these questions, but she's been reading the same headlines about Alabama's prisons for decades. "It's not just Alabama," she said. "Every state is dealing with these same issues." - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin