Pubdate: Mon, 28 Feb 2005
Source: Mobile Register (AL)
Copyright: 2005 Mobile Register
Contact:  http://www.al.com/mobileregister/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/269
Author: Brendan Kirby
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

PRISON CROWDING DEFIES EASY FIXES

The problems facing Alabama's overcrowded and underfunded prisons are too 
big, too complex and too long-lived to be fixed with any single solution, 
according to experts both inside and outside the system.

After Gov. Bob Riley pushed the early release of more than 4,000 inmates, 
Alabama's prisons remain nearly as overcrowded as they were when the 
governor launched the program almost two years ago.

Experts point to a number of other steps Alabama must take to get a handle 
on its overcrowding problem, including re forming sentences, expanding 
community-based corrections programs, improving supervision of people on 
parole and probation and building additional prisons.

"We're not going to solve the problem until we change the sentencing 
system," said Rosa Davis, the state's chief assistant attorney general and 
a member of the Alabama Sentencing Commission. "There's not enough gold in 
Fort Knox to build the prisons we'd have to have."

A big reason Alabama's prisons are so overcrowded is that the state doles 
out harsher punishments than most other states. The state has the nation's 
fifth-highest incarceration rate and the 11th-longest sentences imposed, 
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. It ranks 14th in the country 
in actual time spent behind bars.

Joseph Colquitt, a retired judge who chairs the Sentencing Commission, said 
prison terms in Alabama run long because judges and prosecutors lack 
confidence in the system. Judges often hand down much longer sentences than 
they believe are justified, he said, in an attempt to compensate for the 
time off prisoners get for good behavior and parole.

"No one knows how long someone is going to serve. So they try to calculate 
what they think will happen," Colquitt said. "The problem is, he might go 
down to the penitentiary and not get paroled."

Statistics show that Alabama locks up a great number of drug offenders. Of 
the state's current prisoners, 43.6 percent committed either a property or 
a drug offense. Crimes against individuals account for 51.6 percent of inmates.

According to a 2003 Sentencing Commission report looking at the state's 
inmates admitted from fiscal years 1999 through 2002, the last detailed 
examination of the prison population, the most common felony for which 
prisoners were sentenced was drug possession. Second-degree theft and DUI 
ranked No. 2 and 3, respectively.

Alabama ranked second to Alaska in the percentage of prisoners undergoing 
drug and alcohol treatment, a fact that some experts said suggests the 
state is locking up people who should be in community-based treatment programs.

Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said about 
1,500 inmates are on a waiting list to get into substance-abuse programs 
because there are not enough counselors or classes to meet the demand.

"You can only have so many prisons and so many beds. What are you going to 
use them for?" Colquitt asked. "Are you going to reserve them for violent 
offenders? If so, you need some other way to address the nonviolent offenders."

But Patrick Halliday, a University of Alabama professor who spent 10 years 
as a warden in the prison system, said he worries that early paroles will 
free inmates before they have been able to kick drug and alcohol addictions.

"Most of these are going to need the programs we offer. ... And we're not 
going to be able to do it because we just don't have enough time," he said.

More Than Crime

It's not just crime that fuels Alabama's prison population. Many of the 
inmates who leave on parole are destined to return. About a third of those 
whose paroles have been revoked since the end of April 2003 did not commit 
new crimes. They violated other terms of their parole.

In exchange for the privilege of parole, released prisoners must keep jobs, 
maintain contact with parole officers and stay off drugs. Failure to com 
ply with the rules can result in a parole revocation, sending the parolee 
back to prison to serve the balance of his original sentence.

Reform advocates said the parole board members and officers should have 
much slower trigger fingers when dealing with these so-called "technical" 
violators.

"It's so expensive to continue to supervise dope addicts who may get sent 
back to prison for dirty urine," said Davis, the chief assistant attorney 
general and Sentencing Commission member.

Parole officers said they have cut their clients more slack over the past 
year and a half. However, they added, the system will break down if 
parolees learn there are no consequences for skirting the requirements of 
their release.

Take Juanita Bettis. She could be the poster child for reform advocates who 
believe the criminal justice system wastes prison space on people with 
addiction problems. She was convicted in 1992 of receiving stolen property.

After she was given probation, a judge revoked it in 1995 for failing a 
drug test. Sent back to prison, she won parole in 1999 and moved back to 
Mobile. Authorities revoked her parole in 2001 after she was charged with 
passing bad checks and escaping from custody.

The parole board gave Bettis another shot at freedom in early 2003, but a 
failed drug test in June of that year sent her back to prison again.

The board reinstated Bettis' parole, revoked it again in January 2004 after 
she failed a drug test and reinstated it late last year.

"She is the classic example of overcrowding. She's a nonviolent offender," 
said Roderick Davis, Bettis' parole officer. "She's being sent to rehab 
rather than being punished."

But if community-based drug treatment proves ineffective, Davis said, 
prison is the only alternative.

"I only have so many options. I have no choice but to lock her up," he 
said. "I want to see her do good, but the addiction problem she has is strong."

Bettis, whose parole was reinstated again in November, said she has 
struggled since she became addicted to cocaine as a teenager. Her most 
recent problems stem from stress caused by her husband's fatal bout with 
cancer, she said.

The 39-year-old grandmother said her addiction has been costly. After being 
paroled again in November, she has found work with a temporary employment 
agency and hopes to land a job as a chef at the restaurant where she worked 
before going back to prison.

Bettis said she has had no drug cravings since she got out the last time, 
and she said she's passed all of her drug tests. And now, she has an added 
incentive to stay clean -- she's pregnant.

Bettis said she plans to make up for lost time with her four children and 
six grandchildren as she plows toward May 6, 2006 -- the date she gets off 
of parole.

"I missed a lot of years of my children's life. I'm mature now, and I have 
a daughter who's 18 and in the last year of school. And I missed it," she 
said. "Being in prison gave me a chance to think."

Norwood, the Mobile County parole officer, said she has been slower to 
recommend revocation for rules violations. But, she said, she generally 
sticks to a two-strike policy.

When parole officers are too lenient, she said, public safety suffers. 
Rules violations send a troubling signal that a parolee is about to commit 
new crimes.

"If he doesn't fear me enough to follow my rules, he's definitely not going 
to fear the police," she said.

Reforming Sentences

The Legislature created the Sentencing Commission in 2000 to develop 
guidelines for sentencing and recommend changes to lawmakers.

A few of the commission's recommendations already have gone into effect. 
The Legislature in 2003, for example, raised the threshold for making theft 
a felony.

Under the previous law, stealing items worth as little as $250 made the 
crime a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Under the new law, 
thefts are misdemeanor offenses unless the stolen items are worth at least 
$500. The threshold for Class B felony theft, punishable by a prison term 
of two to 20 years, increased from $1,000 to $2,500.

Other changes have proven more controversial, however. In April, the 
commission recommended voluntary sentencing guidelines in an attempt to 
standardize punishments throughout the state. But the Legislature so far 
has not adopted the recommendations, which would promote shorter prison 
sentences for some types of offenses.

The commission analyzed sentencing practices for 27 different types of 
offenses. The proposed guidelines called for dropping the minimum possible 
sentence ranges for drug crimes by 30 percent and minimum sentences for 
property crimes by 20 percent. For certain drug felonies, one to 10 years 
would be tightened to a range of 13 to 65 months.

Sentence lengths for crimes such as murder, rape and robbery would remain 
about the same.

The standards would be strictly voluntary. Judges still would be able to 
impose any prison term within the law but would be asked to fill out 
paperwork explaining their decisions.

Sentencing Commission members took failure during the last legislative 
session as a blessing in disguise, giving them more time to fine-tune the 
guidelines and prepare for the upcoming session.

The commission put on a dozen workshops for judges throughout the state and 
also ran pilot programs in three jurisdictions, DeKalb, Montgomery and 
Jefferson counties, asking judges to sentence defendants as usual and fill 
out a worksheet to compare the punishments they imposed with the ranges in 
the proposed guidelines.

Flynt, the commission's executive director, said analysts are still 
studying the results of the pilot programs. "All we had before was 
anecdotal stories about sentencing practices. Now we've got the data," she 
said.

Getting judges to alter sentencing practices on a voluntary basis may prove 
prohibitively difficult, warned Allen Tapley, who served 14 years as 
director of the state Administrative Office of Courts.

Tapley recalled working doggedly as director of the court system to 
maintain a balance between new inmates entering prisons each month and 
those leaving. He said he regularly sent memos to judges and even 
telephoned them personally in an attempt to keep the punishments they 
imposed more or less in line with their colleagues.

That and the advent of more alternative sentencing programs designed to 
keep some offenders out of penitentiaries did work -- for a while. But, he 
said, keeping that balance is difficult over the long haul.

"It takes all cylinders working, all at the same time, to maintain the same 
pace," he said. "We've used everything known to man to try to solve this 
problem."

The governor's release plan involved creating a special docket of 
nonviolent cases for the parole board to consider ahead of schedule, 
beginning at the end of April 2003. In December of that year, he appointed 
three additional parole board members to reduce a backlog of cases.

Although the number of inmates paroled over the last two years has jumped 
dramatically as a result of Riley's actions, new prisoners have arrived 
almost as fast. In April 2003, the state's prison population stood at 
28,338. Today, it is 27,255, a decrease of 1,083.

"You're going to definitely have to have more prisons built. You're not 
going to solve this problem simply by having more early releases," said 
Lynda Flynt, executive director of the Sentencing Commission. "When we're 
at 185 percent capacity, I don't think that's going to be the solution."

Prisons are the most expensive component of the criminal justice system, 
however.

The state has not built a new one since 1997. A master plan for the prison 
system prepared by Carter Goble Associates in March 2003 shows why. The 
consulting firm estimated the cost of building enough prisons to ensure a 
bed for every inmate at $933.7 million.

For a state prison system so short on funds that it doesn't supply napkins 
to its inmates, that's an almost unthinkable amount of cash, and Department 
of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett noted that it doesn't include the 
money that would be needed to meet future needs.

"The reality is not Dollar One has been budgeted for any new construction," 
he said. "You want to be tough on crime, and you want to incarcerate 
people, but you don't want to pay for it."

That leaves legislators and other policymakers to grapple with other options.

Safety Net

One way to cut down on the prison population is to reduce the number who 
return after serving time behind bars. By national standards, Alabama does 
relatively little to help ex-cons succeed, according to advocates and 
government officials.

On release day, an Alabama prisoner gets $10, a set of clothes and a bus 
ticket.

"It's pretty stark. If you put yourself in their situation, you can 
understand how hard that is," said Denis Devane, who helps ex-cons make the 
transition back to regular life as a volunteer with the Birmingham chapter 
of Prison Fellowship. "Even going to McDonald's and looking at that menu up 
there and suddenly having choices, even that can be traumatic for some guys 
that have been in a long time."

As paroles have increased, so has the number of parolees. To try to keep 
track of them all, the state boosted spending for parole and probation 
officers. State spending on the office for this fiscal year -- $24.3 
million -- is more than 63 percent higher than it was two years ago, making 
it one of the few agencies in state government to see a significant budget 
increase.

The extra money allowed the department to hire 66 new parole and probation 
officers over the last two years, bringing the total to more than 277 
statewide. Cynthia Dillard, the assistant executive director of the Board 
of Pardons and Paroles, said that reduced the average number of parolees 
per officer from almost 200 to around 155.

"That's still double what it should be," she said, "but we're in a lot 
better shape than we were."

Parole officers said their experiences have mirrored the statistics.

Monica Norwood, a parole officer in the Mobile office, said her caseload 
shot up to 235 after parolees from the special docket started getting out 
of prison in 2003.

With that many people to supervise, Norwood said, she had to work nights 
and weekends just to fit in all of the appointments. And, she said, the 
crunch limited face-to-face contacts to only the most cursory chats.

"It was like, 'Hey, how are you doing? Hi. See you next month,'" she said.

Norwood said 75 parolees would be an ideal number but added that her 
current caseload -- around 150 -- is manageable.

Carl Wicklund, executive director of the Lexington, Ky.-based American 
Probation and Parole Association, said caseload matters far less than workload.

The important question, he said, is what are parole officers expected to 
do? An officer with low-risk parolees who have had stable jobs can 
supervise many more people than an officer with high-risk offenders.

In general, though, Wicklund said, parole becomes less effective with 
higher caseloads.

"If you have a doctor with 150 cancer patients to see in a month or even a 
week, how good a job is he going to do? ... A hundred and fifty, if you 
assume these are people just coming out of prison and need a lot of 
support, that's huge," he said. "It's going to become much more of an 
administrative function. ... (Parole officers) should ideally be agents of 
change."

Tapley, the former court system administrator, said he believes the Board 
of Pardons and Paroles remains understaffed and underfunded even after the 
recent increases. That's shortsighted, he said, because there is no cheaper 
way to deal with criminals.

"That's the most important thing we haven't done," he said. "It works 
historically. It works in every state. And it's common sense."

The early results of the special program show that fewer of the inmates cut 
loose under it have committed new crimes than ex-cons as a whole. Despite 
those encouraging statistics, Board of Pardons and Paroles Director William 
Segrest decried major gaps in community-based, substance-abuse treatment 
and mental-health programs.

"Those programs are absolutely critical," he said. "They're not there now, 
not in nearly sufficient numbers."

Devane, who serves on the board of directors at Shepherds Fold, a group of 
five halfway houses in the Birmingham area, agreed.

"I don't think there are enough of them, and I think there is a need for 
halfway houses that can take guys for a longer period of time," he said. 
"Four months, for a lot of people, isn't quite enough."

Devane said the first few months out of prison are key. When ex-cons fail, 
it's usually during that period. He said counselors at the Shepherds Fold 
halfway houses concentrate on helping participants beat lingering 
substance-abuse addictions, find jobs and reconnect with the community.

He said they also try to get them comfortable with living without the 
strict, regimented structure of prison.

"The financial pressures can be pretty significant, especially if an inmate 
doesn't have a family," Devane said. "Prison becomes home. And when you're 
leaving home, it gets pretty rough."
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