Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 14, 1994 TAG: 9409140093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY BOB EVANS NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SALEM, ORE. NOTE: LEDE LENGTH: Long
Should Steve Buning be in prison?
At 32, Buning has been convicted 26 times of crimes such as drug possession, drunken driving, breaking into a business to steal cigarettes, and punching a police officer in the mouth. More recently, he got caught passing forged payroll checks in an attempt to defraud several companies of about $5,000.
Buning has been using the addictive drug methamphetamine for about 13 years and doesn't plan to stop, despite the efforts of two state-paid drug rehabilitation programs.
``I like the feeling,'' Buning explained with a shrug, raising his hands and arms in a ``What? Me Worry?'' gesture that made the tattoo of a naked woman writhe on his right forearm. On the other side of that forearm were needle marks from his drug habit.
Buning has spent 2 1/2 years behind bars, but never more than three to four months at a time. That's because he victimizes businesses, never homes or people he can see. ``I don't do person crimes, man," he said. "I wouldn't want that done to me.''
He doubts longer prison terms would alter his behavior.
Deciding what to do with the Steve Bunings of the world is a major issue for states considering tougher criminal justice systems. Thieves and other nonviolent criminals are more numerous than the violent ones; the ratio was 6-to-1 in Virginia between 1988 and 1992.
A lock-'em-up policy for nonviolent offenders can cost taxpayers millions - sometimes billions - more dollars for new prisons and guards. But downplaying incarceration for these offenders leaves a risk that they will commit more crimes, perhaps violent ones.
The Allen solution
Virginia Gov. George Allen has proposed abolishing parole and establishing ``truth in sentencing'' to keep violent offenders behind bars longer. As for offenders such as Buning, Allen's Commission on Parole Abolition and Sentencing Reform has recommended that prison terms remain the same - unless the criminal has a violent offense on his record. In that case the prison term would increase by 300 percent to 500 percent.
As for ``appropriate offenders,'' who are never specifically defined in the Allen proposal, the governor would generally encourage expansion of alternatives to incarceration, such as home electronic monitoring and intensive probation.
But Allen's plan emphasizes the notion of slamming criminals behind bars. In prison construction costs alone, the governor's plan would cost Virginia taxpayers up to $250 million more during the next 10 years than if the system remained the same.
Virginia doesn't lock up all its thieves now, but 50 percent of its prisoners are in for property crimes, said Rick Kern, director of the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. The percentage would fall to between 30 percent and 40 percent under Allen's reform plan, he said. All told, the plan would add about 5,200 more inmates to prison by the year 2001 and 7,900 more by 2014, Kern said.
Kern and former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, co-chairman of Allen's commission, said the group decided against recommending alternatives to punishing thieves because thieves often graduate to murder, rape and armed robbery. Of the adult violent offenders convicted in Virginia between 1990 to 1992, 31 percent previously had been convicted as adults of a property crime.
Also, Barr notes, reducing punishment for thieves would raise costs to taxpayers for catching, prosecuting and jailing these criminals for new crimes.
The Oregon alternative
Oregon and several other states trying to reduce violent crime decided to cut prison terms for thieves and find other ways to punish or control them. They wanted to make room behind bars, and in their budgets, for longer sentences for violent criminals.
An option chosen by Oregon taxpayers and legislators in 1989 was an outgrowth of that desire. They were tired of a revolving-door criminal justice system in which a parole board could cut a 20-year prison sentence to a few months and judges could send child molesters with multiple convictions to outpatient treatment instead of jail.
Sentencing guidelines were created for Oregon judges. Discretionary parole was abolished for new offenders. Prisoners could reduce their sentences a maximum of 20 percent by behaving in prison and trying to turn their lives around.
Thieves and nonviolent criminals were targeted for less prison time, while violent offenders on average received sentences that were 41 percent longer, the Oregon Corrections Department said. Rapists, for example, typically serve nearly six years today, compared with less than 31/2 years in 1986.
Oregon's choices dramatically changed the makeup of its prisons. In 1986, violent criminals comprised one-third of Oregon's prison population. The figure now is more than two-thirds. Thieves now account for 20 percent of the prison population, down from 50 percent, the state Corrections Department said.
Oregon built new prisons to house additional violent criminals but would have had to construct still more if punishments for nonviolent offenders had remained the same, said Dave Factor, executive director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Council, a state agency that analyzes crime and sentencing data.
Oregon prison cost savings
Instead of paying $45 to $50 a day to lock up, house, feed and clothe those crooks, Oregonians chose to spend $2 to $12 a day for supervised probation for people like Buning who steal or use drugs, said Frank Hall, director of the Oregon Department of Corrections.
Supporters of the Oregon approach say the alternative - prison for virtually all criminals - guarantees high costs without the promise that crime will be stopped or even reduced.
Arrests in Virginia and elsewhere are made in only about one-fourth of all crimes, critics note. And for every example of a state where crime rates fell after more people were locked up longer, criminologists can point to several where a high incarceration rate was followed by an even higher crime rate or no change at all.
``It's an ongoing debate. It's one of those schisms in this profession that will always be going on,'' said Factor, the Oregon crime analyst. ``Everyone picks the version they want to hear.''
Since Oregon made its changes, violent crime has increased 9 percent, FBI statistics show. Nearby California repeatedly has increased punishments for all offenders. Its violent crime rate is up 14 percent since 1989.
Hall, a former Virginian who runs Oregon's prisons, said 30 years of working in prisons has shown him that crime rates have little to do with what happens behind bars.
``Crime comes from the community,'' and that's where you fight it, with education, jobs, well-baby care, teen pregnancy prevention and other programs, he said. What counts is how you spend the money from taxes in all of those areas, plus prisons, he said.
That's why about 25 percent of his corrections budget goes for remedies such as community probation, drug treatment and supervised parole. Keeping offenders in their communities where they have a chance of finding jobs and nurturing ties to loved ones is more likely to change someone's behavior than prison, he said.
Changing behavior, not punishment, is the key to reducing crime, Hall said. He added that you can punish someone without sending him to prison.
For thieves and other offenders, Hall said, short prison or jail stays can work better than prison - if they're coupled with follow-up probation and other programs. Studies show that, after a few weeks, people get used to prison as a routine anyway, he said, so the punishment effect declines.
`Intermediate sanctions'
In Oregon, people who steal, or who use drugs but are not caught dealing them, typically are sentenced to one to three months in a local jail to show them what total loss of freedom is like. Then they must endure intermediate sanctions - punishments that cost less than prison, Hall said.
Intermediate sanctions can include time spent under house arrest or electronic monitoring, days assigned to drug rehabilitation programs, time spent clearing brush, pulling weeds or participating in other supervised community service work.
They also can include days enrolled in intensive supervised probation programs where participants must meet with job counselors, drug counselors or probation officers daily and must file daily reports on how they plan to spend the next 24 hours.
Probation officers then make random checks in person or by phone to ensure those reports are accurate. If not, the offender can be returned to jail or sent to prison without a court or parole board hearing. In Virginia, probation and parole violators are entitled to a hearing, and this would continue under the Allen plan.
Steve Buning is on probation in Marion County, Ore., which includes the state capital of Salem. He served a 90-day jail term for the check forgeries more than a year ago, did his community service and would be off probation except that he still has not paid restitution to the businesses he defrauded.
As a result, he was still subject to random drug tests and other requirements in July. When Buning's urine came up positive for drugs in early July, his probation officer sent him to a work center for 16 days as punishment.
There, Buning was locked up at night in a room similar to a bare-bones Army barracks. During the day he had to look for work or do community service, in this case clearing brush in 95-degree weather.
The cost to supervise and house Buning at the work center, $45a day, is more than regular probation but about $10 a day less than prison, Oregon officials say. Probation officials say if Buning commits further violations, he'll be brought back for a longer term in the work center or jail, maybe even prison if he behaves badly enough. The hope is to change his behavior without the high cost of prison.
Rick McKenna, a supervisor at the work center, has worked with people like Buning for 20 years. He is convinced it's wiser to spend money on alternatives to prison than to lock up a thief every day of the year and not have that money to spend on schools, roads, libraries or other needs.
``He's not a dangerous person,'' McKenna said of Buning. ``He's a thief, and we just keep applying sanctions.''
Earlier this month, Buning's urine tested positive for drugs again and he requested drug treatment, said his probation officer, Steve Carroll.
``I think he's finally burned out on it,'' Carroll said.
There are failures in community-based and intermediate sanctions programs, and not just by the felons.
McKenna, while a champion of the concept, said Oregon's legislators and bureaucrats never have put up enough money to pay for all the probation officers and programs needed for the felons diverted from prison.
As a result, he said, some on probation don't get the degree of supervision they should. The average probation officer's caseload averaged 50 a few years ago, he said. Now it's 78.
Oregon taxpayers, though, want to spend only so much for such programs. Earlier this year, a petition to send all felony property crime offenders to prison - at an estimated cost of $300 million a year, or $100 per person - didn't attract enough signatures to get on the ballot for a statewide referendum.
And when the Oregon legislature voted to add $10 million to its corrections budget last year, Hall helped sell the increase to legislators by pledging to shift $7 million into community-based education, counseling and probationary programs designed to serve as alternatives to prison for people like Steve Buning.
Hall said 80 percent of people sentenced to probation in Oregon still complete their terms without being caught committing another crime or even violating one of the many rules of probation. ``That tells me that to keep an orderly society, you don't have to lock everybody up,'' he said.
by CNB