Pubdate: Mon, 17 Dec 2007
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?244 (Sentencing - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Sentencing+Commission
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/crack+cocaine
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

PREPPING FOR FREED PRISONERS

Federal and State Lockups Will Release Perhaps Thousands of Inmates 
Next Year. L.A. County Should Prepare.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission corrected a subtle injustice last week 
when it decided to retroactively reduce the sentences of inmates 
imprisoned for using or selling crack cocaine, making those terms 
correspond more closely with powder cocaine sentences. When justice 
is vindicated, even late in the process, it's a victory for everyone. 
But the victory isn't free.

Several thousand federal inmates currently behind bars on crack 
convictions will be eligible for release beginning in March -- and 
some of them could be coming to a street near you. It is pleasant to 
imagine those people arriving home free of their addictions, fully 
trained for readily available jobs, rehabilitated by prison and ready 
to contribute to their communities. It is pleasant -- but a fantasy.

Many will come home with addictions intact, unprepared to take their 
place in society and further damaged, rather than reformed, by their 
stay in prison. States, counties and cities must choose now between 
ramping up programs for drug treatment and job training or paying a 
steeper price later as they deal with untreated addicts replenishing 
the population of skid rows or jails. Police, at least, must prepare 
for the influx of released addicts -- but what a foolish waste of 
resources and lives it would be if cops were the only ones ready to 
greet the inmates on their return to the streets.

In a stroke of good fortune, California has only 307 inmates in line 
for release next year under the commission's decision. Los Angeles 
and adjacent counties have 124. The numbers are significant but 
manageable -- a minor seismic jolt in the scheme of things. But the 
inmate-release Big One is on its way.

Later next year, federal judges overseeing California's crowded 
prisons may free thousands of inmates before their terms are up, and 
about a third of them will be coming to Los Angeles County. That's in 
addition to prisoners who already ought to be out. The state's 
correctional system is so overburdened with drug convicts and violent 
criminals that it is incapable of even releasing prisoners on time, 
because officials don't have the staff or technology to properly 
calculate good-behavior credits.

Meanwhile, inmates aren't getting sufficient mental health or other 
support, meaning that when they do come out, they are all too likely 
to take their places on the costly and crazy county merry-go-round: 
hospital, skid row, handcuffs, court and back to jail.

Los Angeles County may be hit hard by the housing slump and will have 
little "extra" tax money to spend on the returning addicts and 
ex-cons. But if supervisors fail to cobble together money now to 
provide needed care for those soon-to-be discharged prisoners, 
taxpayers most certainly will be paying a much higher bill later.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake