
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 5, 1990                   TAG: 9007050322
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                  LENGTH: Medium

WILDER OKS WORK RELEASE EXPANSION/ BY BILL BYRD

Two years after political considerations and a rash of violence led the state to pull all but a handful of prisoners out of work release, Gov. Douglas Wilder has approved a massive expansion of the program.

Wilder has agreed to new guidelines that could put up to 150 convicts into civilian jobs by the end of the summer, the officials said this week.

Plans call for the inmates to hold jobs while housed at special facilities in Chesterfield and Goochland counties, said Theophlise Twitty, the state's deputy secretary of public safety.

Only prisoners who have never been convicted of such violent offenses as murder or sexual assault will be eligible, Twitty said. Most of the participants will be drawn from minimum security field units, and the transfer will free space for state inmates now jammed into local jails.

Twitty also said the state will greatly expand the number of prisoners allowed to work in road gangs. The Corrections Department plans to have 1,000 inmates working on the gangs by September. Between 600 and 700 prisoners are now assigned to road work.

Both the work release and road gang programs were sharply curtailed in October 1988, as Republicans hammered Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis over problems with a furlough program in his home state of Massachusetts.

The Virginia cutbacks also followed a series of violent incidents involving prisoners. In the summer of 1988, an inmate walked away from a road gang in Prince William County and murdered a woman. And Richmond's "Southside Strangler," who raped and killed several local women in 1987, turned out to be Timothy Spencer, an inmate in a Richmond halfway house who committed the killings while living in the facility.

With the state facing a prison population explosion, however, a growing number of officials recently have called for renewed emphasis on programs designed to alleviate overcrowding. Wilder spokeswoman Laura Dillard said this week the governor views work release as one such program.

The work program had been "pretty well full" before it was curtailed in 1988, Dillard said.

by CNB