Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 12, 1990 TAG: 9007120415
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
From that standpoint alone, Gov. Douglas Wilder's decision to reinstate a major work-release program in Virginia's corrections system should be welcomed.
And there's another reason: More than 150 of the system's beds, set aside for prisoners on work release, have been empty since former Gov. Gerald Baliles pulled all but a few inmates out of the program two years ago. Empty - at a time when state prisons, built to hold 12,000, have an inmate population of nearly 15,000, and local jails, with designed capacity for 7,500, have close to 12,000.
Last year, the Commission on Prison and Jail Overcrowding warned that Virginia's inmate population could reach 64,000 by the end of this decade and that the cost to taxpayers to build prisons and jails enough to house them all would be $4.4 billion. Facing such staggering numbers, many politicians and corrections officials have called for a variety of programs, including work release, to alleviate the overcrowding.
As with any program that deals with a criminal clientele, there are risks. In the summer of 1988, an inmate walked away from a road gang in Prince William County and murdered a woman. There were other violent incidents involving state prisoners.
These came as Republicans were turning up the political heat on Democratic presidental nominee Michael Dukakis over a violent incident involving a furloughed Massachusetts inmate. In what became known as "the Willie Horton syndrome," politicians throughout the country - Baliles included - halted many prison rehabilitation programs. It wasn't the first time in Virginia that such programs had been yanked out of the justice system because of political considerations.
Wilder's green light follows the rewriting of guidelines for the program that could put 150 inmates into jobs outside the prisons by summer's end. Peter G. Decker Jr., chairman of the state's Board of Corrections, says he would eventually like to see no less than 5 percent of the inmate population - about 750 prisoners - in work-release programs.
The guidelines provide a measure of comfort for the public. Only prisoners who have never been convicted of violent offenses such as murder or sexual assault will be eligible for the program. Even so, while risks can be minimized, there is no guarantee that there won't be an incident or two. That's almost inevitable, especially if the program is expanded as Decker envisions.
The public, however, is certainly no safer if convicts are released from prison without efforts made to reduce the odds they'll commit crimes again. Nor is the public protected by allowing overcrowding to reach the point that dangerous criminals are released before they should be. Work release is like a halfway house between incarceration and freedom; convicts can learn work habits while their adjustment to employment outside prison walls is strictly supervised. There's little or no supervision once a convict is released.
If an occasional incident does accompany restoration of the work-release program, the public should keep its cool - and the politicians should not exploit the issue.
Work release is something of a gamble for Wilder and the state. But the potential advantages - reduced recidivism , a brake on out-of-control prison population growth and enormous cost savings for taxpayers - make it well worth the risk.
by CNB