Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409140033
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOW CHAMBERLAIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Why crime has emerged now as the No. 1 issue is difficult to understand. Despite a few urban, hot pockets of crime, Virginia remains a relatively low-crime state. We all want protection from violent criminals, but the fact is Virginia already spends 91 percent more per capita for persons under criminal-justice control than the national average. The state's prison population has nearly doubled in the past 10 years.
Gov. George Allen's proposal would divert a staggering additional amount of money into the prison system, money that Virginia will have to pay when the present administration is no longer in office. In addition to practically bankrupting the state, this strategy would actually make us less safe from violent crime.
The new plan further blurs the critical distinction between violent offenses (such as murder, rape, robbery, child molestation) for which sentences should indeed be stiffer to protect the public safety; and nonviolent offenses (such as crimes against property and drug use) for which alternative sentencing would be both much more cost-effective and more effective in reducing recidivism.
If little distinction is made between the methods used to control violent and nonviolent offenders, the result is a corrections system that is prohibitively expensive, overcrowded and unsafe, and under pressure to release prisoners early, some of whom are the violent offenders who everyone agrees should serve longer sentences. Half of the 23,000 prisoners in Virginia are in the nonviolent category.
The governor now proposes to redefine violent offenses in a way rejected by America's founders and criminal-justice experts for the past 300 years. He recommends that burglary or possession of 10 grams of cocaine - both property crimes rather than crimes against persons - should now be classified as violent crimes. If this radical proposal is adopted, the cost of prisons will skyrocket on the one hand and the public will be endangered on the other. Burglars would have an incentive to carry weapons and use them.
Official estimates are that the governor's recommendations (known as Proposal X) to abolish parole and lengthen sentences will cost $850 million over the next 10 years for new prison construction. Operating costs will have to be increased by $350-400 million per year to support 52,064 prison beds, an increase of 30,000. Independent budget analysts suggest that the actual cost will be closer to $2 billion for construction.
That money must come from somewhere, since the governor is opposed to any tax increase. Is the money going to come from education? From colleges and universities? From local law-enforcement? From programs with a track record of preventing crime? If we are going to spend all this money on corrections, we had better be certain it is effective, because there won't be any money to do anything else.
What happens if we spend all this money, and Virginia's experience is similar to that in California, which has tripled prison capacity with no significant crime reduction? Or Florida's? Prison overcrowding forces early release merely to reduce prison population, thereby reducing public safety.
There is an alternative to the governor's proposal that would both save money and reduce crime. We should expand the Community Diversions Incentive Program for nonviolent offenders, in operation since 1980.
Community-based treatment accepts the premise that crime is a community problem that cannot be ameliorated by removing the offender from the community and treating his problems in an artificial environment. Communities must accept the responsibility to treat their own nonviolent offenders rather than expect others to take their problems off their hands. The nonviolent offender must remain in the community where he learned to do wrong and in that same community learn to do what is right. It is pointless to succeed in prison only to return to the community to fail again.
Community-based treatment for the nonviolent offender offers the advantage of maintaining employment, paying restitution for property damage or loss, offsetting the cost of treatment, and eliminating public welfare for dependents. Holding a job and paying taxes makes a lot more sense than being warehoused at public expense for $16,000 to $20,000 a year.
The choice is clear: Virginia can create more community-based programs so nonviolent offenders can pay the penalty for their crimes by working a real job to support themselves and make restitution to their victims. Or, we can abolish parole, lengthen sentences and radically redefine violent crime.
A win-win opportunity presents itself. We can use community programs for nonviolent offenders and put violent criminals in prison. The result is improved public safety and control over the soaring corrections budget.
Dow Chamberlain is executive director of the Richmond-based Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.
Virginia Forum
by CNB