Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409150042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ANNE GEARAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
He took office vowing to ``stop the bleeding'' and make Virginia safer.
To Allen, that means abolishing parole, lengthening prison sentences and installing ``truth in sentencing'' along the lines of the federal system.
``Virginians want to be safe in their homes, in their schools, in their places of work,'' Allen, a Republican, said in an interview this summer. ``In my heart and my head it makes absolute good sense, logical sense, that if big, violent offenders are out of circulation they will not be committing those crimes. We are making our very best effort to ensure Virginians are safe.''
As crime became the central issue of the 1993 campaign, so Allen wants to make it the capstone of his administration. Beginning Monday, Allen will try to translate political sound bites into public policy when he asks the General Assembly to approve and finance his crime-fighting plan.
The interlocking Allen proposals go farther than any considered in recent memory and would have repercussions well beyond Allen's four-year term.
Among the big issues before the legislature: exactly how to finance a prison construction program approaching $850 million in the next 10 years; whether the plan is fair to blacks; the long-term effect on the size of Virginia's prison population; where to build as many as 27 new prisons.
Saying the Allen scheme is weak but expensive medicine, some Democratic legislators have talked of developing an alternative.
Beneath the nuts-and-bolts questions lies skepticism from inside and outside the criminal justice system. Critics doubt that a plan focusing on adult felons after they are caught could make much headway against violent crime.
``We need to do a very great deal to reduce crime and control crime. But that's just the wrong approach,'' said Virginia Commonwealth University criminologist Paul Keve. Virginia would squander an opportunity to make meaningful change in its justice system if it settled for an ``emotional response'' like abolishing parole, Keve said.
Throughout the United States, no state has shown that abolishing parole reduces crime.
``Locking people up isn't the answer to stopping crime, but it generally is a popular idea,'' Keve said. ``It makes people feel better, or at least that they are doing something.''
Zeroing in on the terror
Allen's plan focuses on some of the worst, most frightening criminals - those already convicted and punished for violent crimes who return to society to kill, maim and terrorize.
A recent state study shows that, from 1990 to 1992, 4 percent of Virginia's murders, 2 percent of its rapes and 9 percent of its robberies were committed by people granted parole and still under state supervision.
Who is responsible for the rest of the bloodshed? Many are people who would be virtually unaffected by Allen's plan: first-time offenders, juveniles and people who don't get caught. In Virginia, more than 40 percent of violent crimes go unsolved.
Allen's plan does not address underlying causes of crime such as poverty and inadequate education.
``We don't have unlimited resources in this state, and the issue is prioritization - what do we want to focus on?'' Allen said. ``What we're focusing on is the violent offenders who have already shown themselves by their actions.''
About 34 percent of Virginia's adult prisoners would receive substantially longer sentences under Allen's ``Proposal X,'' said Richard Cullen, a former federal prosecutor and co-chairman of Allen's Commission on Parole Abolition and Sentencing Reform.
``These prisoners are a minority of the prison population, but these are the crimes the public fears the most,'' Cullen said.
Some on the front line of the state prison system worry that Allen may not build enough prisons to handle the inmates his policies would bring in.
``We are concerned that the more laws we pass, the more people we put in jail, is all well and good, but we need to make more space if that's the public policy,'' said John Jones, director of the Virginia Sheriffs' Association. ``What we don't want to see is `let's lock 'em up but let's not appropriate the funds.' That could have a worse result than the system we have now.''
Allen would eliminate parole for new offenders and revise sentencing so violent criminals would remain behind bars at least twice as long as is common now.
A small, 700-bed program to treat drug abusers in prisons is the plan's only new nod toward rehabilitation, although inmates would be able to shave time from their sentences by participating in existing prison drug and education programs. An estimated 80 percent of Virginia's inmates have substance abuse problems.
Allen's plan arose from public fear and frustration and the potent political capital they convey, Mary Washington College political scientist Mark Rozell said.
``This was a very powerful issue for George Allen and the Republicans in 1993,'' Rozell said. ``There is a widespread public perception that people are fundamentally unsafe, that crime is getting worse and that the criminal justice system is too lenient toward criminals. `Tough on crime' rhetoric sells in this environment.''
Mary Sue Terry, a seven-year Democratic attorney general who lost the gubernatorial race to Allen, said she also favored lengthening sentences but would have tried to allot something for education and crime prevention.
``If we continue on the present course we will have left 1994 with an insignificant investment in the future of the children and adults of Virginia,'' she said, ``and that to me is shortsighted.''
Allen's proposal would cost up to $250 million above the $600 million that Virginia already had planned to spend building prisons over the next 10 years. By the 10th year, the cost of operating prisons will have increased to $400 million annually, according to Allen's commission.
Allen wants to finance most of the construction with long-term bonds. The bonds would be repaid by taxpayers, with interest, over a period of years.
His financial estimates project use of inmate labor to build prisons when possible. Also assumed: A 2-for-1 plan under which 2,100 inmates would share cells.
The Allen administration estimates that its plan would have averted 78 murders from 1986 to 1993 if the proposals had been in effect. That figure is 1.9 percent of all homicides reported to the Virginia State Police during that period.
The commission also calculated that 151 rapes and more than 1,000 other crimes would have been prevented then had Allen's plan been in effect. Comparing those numbers with state police reports suggests the Allen plan would have averted 1 percent of reported rapes, 0.6 percent of reported robberies and 0.47 percent of aggravated assaults.
Allen has insisted his ideas will reduce crime, but Cullen said the plan can't guarantee that. Instead, the plan will hold down an expected increase in crime and influx of prisoners in the coming decade, Cullen said.
``We will cut the rate of increase,'' if not the rate of crime, he said.
Many of those crimes will be committed by children, who are virtually ignored in the Allen plan.
In 1992, juveniles accounted for 13 percent of all Virginia arrests for violent crime. Officials predict that when the teen-age population begins a sharp increase soon, juvenile crime will explode.
Seventy-eight percent of chronic juvenile offenders are rearrested as adults, the Department of Corrections says. At that time they would come under the restraints of Proposal X.
In the juvenile system, those accused of serious offenses may be held as long as seven years or until their 21st birthdays. They are sent to ``learning centers,'' institutions that have become overcrowded, some say overwhelmed.
The learning centers held more than 900 youths in August in space designed for 725. No new centers are budgeted, although the state is studying how to handle the expected increase in young criminals. Its report is due Oct. 1.
``We're dealing with a whole different breed of juvenile offenders today,'' said Patricia West, director of the Department of Youth and Family Services. ``They're a much more sophisticated breed of criminals.''
The commission did not propose deterrents to juvenile crime or alternatives to locking up teen-age criminals. The commission's report suggested that the 1995 General Assembly consider changing the juvenile system.
Allen's plan would change the rules for juveniles in one regard: Crimes committed by juveniles would count against them as adults under the proposed sentencing apparatus.
Lawmakers also should consider a crime victims' bill of rights, restricting pretrial detention and expanding the death penalty, the commission's report said.
Allen touched on those ideas as a candidate and during his first months in office. But no other anti-crime measure has received as much attention as ending parole.
Again and again Allen hammered at parole in stump speeches, painting it as a perquisite that demonstrated a lax hand on crime. Because of parole and the practice of shaving up to 300 days from every year served as a reward for good behavior, Virginia inmates typically serve about one-third of their sentences. That system of granting ``good time'' would be limited to 15 percent of sentences under the Allen proposals.
Parole and sentencing changes
Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney Paul B. Ebert, a Democrat, has won more death row convictions than any other Virginia prosecutor during nearly three decades in office. He said parole should be reduced but not abolished.
``People have been out on soapboxes for years talking about how we really had a swinging door under our system. But I really do think there is a place for parole,'' he said.
He has persuaded inmates to testify against other criminals by suggesting that cooperation will help their cases before the Parole Board.
Parole was devised as a cost-saving measure and to provide incentive to prisoners to behave. It has evolved into a safety valve to ease prison overcrowding.
In Virginia and elsewhere, some parole is granted at the discretion of a review board. Parole is mandatory when an inmate is six months from the end of his term.
Parole already is on the decline. The number of inmates who asked for and received parole fell from about 40 percent last year to 5 percent in July, as Allen appointees replaced the old board. Allen administration officials predict the parole rate will level off around 15 percent for the year.
``Parole in and of itself isn't the problem,'' said Julie McConnell, assistant director of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. ``It could be valuable if it wasn't used as a safety valve. ... This seems like too simple a solution to a very complex problem.''
The ideas proposed in Virginia have been tried on varying scales elsewhere.
North Carolina found it could not afford the move because too many criminals backed up in prison. Florida built lots of expensive prisons before repealing and revamping many of the same changes Virginia now contemplates.
And in Texas, the Legislature politically could not accept reducing sentences for criminals even if, as with the Allen plan, most inmates would actually end up serving more time.
Cullen said the key distinction in Virginia's proposal is its narrow focus on repeat offenders and violent crime.
``We are focusing on violent crime and the worst criminals,'' Cullen said. ``Where North Carolina and some other states got into so much trouble was they just did it across the board - they increased sentences for everybody.''
Under Allen's plan, an inmate's sentence would hinge on his record. With each conviction would come a progressively stiffer term, culminating in a sentence up to seven times longer than a typical inmate might serve now.
Standardized sentences would lessen racial and economic disparities and make planning for new prisons simpler, Cullen said.
Virginia allows judges full say in sentencing. Judges are asked but not required to fill out work sheets explaining their reasoning.
Allen first proposed requiring judges to adhere to new mandatory sentencing rules, then amended that to narrow ``sentencing ranges.''
Judges generally bristle at anything that reduces their freedom to tailor sentences. Federal judges have complained bitterly about mandatory minimum sentences since parole was abolished and sentences restructured in the federal system.
``Someone, somewhere apparently thought the Virginia judicial system was halfway good and they put people such as myself in our positions because they thought we had discretion,'' said Arlington Circuit Judge Benjamin N.A. Kendrick, who opposes the proposed sentencing rules. ``Now they're going to tie that person's hands? I question the wisdom of that.''
Judges would complete work sheets that assign a ``score'' for each convict and his crime and accordingly assign a narrow range of suggested sentences. A judge who wanted to depart from the range would have to explain why.
Nationally about 1.5 million people are behind bars.
Close to 95,000 of those are federal prisoners. And of those, more than 80 percent are prisoners sentenced since 1988, when the federal court system abolished parole and stiffened sentences for many offenses, said Daniel Dunne, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons.
If the federal model is a guide, abolishing parole is an expensive proposition. The federal prison budget increased from $876 million in 1987 to $2.2 billion this year.
Squeezed for space, the federal government is contracting with other prisons to house nearly 10,000 inmates.
To cope with overcrowding and a projected continued increase in prisoners, the federal government plans to build 30 institutions with 44,000 beds.
``This agency has not had that level of building in the past, and it is due to the new law,'' Dunne said.
by CNB