Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 13, 1994 TAG: 9406140286
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Wallin was referring to social costs, but the state's top criminologist said there are economic benefits to shutting the revolving door in Virginia's prison system, as long as the reform takes a scientific approach.
Critics argue that Allen's plan to abolish parole and increase sentences for violent crimes is a lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach taxpayers can't afford.
The Commission on Parole Abolition and Sentencing Reform has not determined what the plan would cost. The state already is estimating it will need to build nine prisons to house an additional 7,000 inmates by 1999. One 800-bed prison the state wants to build in Wise County would cost about $52 million.
Allen also proposes diverting nonviolent offenders from prison to make space for violent and repeat offenders.
Richard Kern, director of the state Criminal Justice Research Center, said repeat offenders account for nearly half of the cost of police, prisons and the judicial system. A study he presented to the commission last week showed that $670 million of the $1.6 billion spent on the criminal justice system can be attributed to inmates serving repeated jail sentences.
Inmates now serve an average of 33 percent of their sentences. Many are free for only short periods before they are arrested for more crimes and sent back to prison.
Allen wants them to serve at least 85 percent. That would reduce the costs of reinvestigating, rearresting, reprosecuting and reincarcerating criminals, Kern said.
"You have to weigh the increased cost of keeping people in prison longer against the decreased cost of lower crime rates and increased public safety," Kern said. "We may find that we don't have to spend more money than under the current system and may save money."
He said the key is focusing on high-risk offenders and using research to help identify "those at most risk of becoming predators on our society."
Mason Nottingham, head of a Fairfax-based criminal justice reform group called Cure, said longer prison sentences only affect individual criminals and have not reduced crime in other states that have tried similar programs.
Kern said Virginia is in a better position than other states that have abolished parole because "we can learn from their mistakes."
Kern's study on repeat offenders is one of many that will be churned out before Sept. 19, when the General Assembly meets to act on a wide range of proposed criminal justice reform measures.
Kern said violent crime could be reduced if the state puts younger violent criminals in prison for longer periods, and he bolsters the argument with these statistics:
Most murders, manslaughters and robberies in Virginia are committed by people between the ages of 17 and 24.
Nearly 80 percent of the violent crimes in Virginia in 1992 were committed by people with prior convictions.
From 1985 through 1991, 56 percent of violent offenders served fewer than three years in prison.
The likelihood that criminals will be sent back to prison for more offenses within three years of their release decreases as they get older.
For example, prisons see the return of 46 percent of people convicted of burglary and released from prison when they are younger than 20. The rate drops to 31 percent when they are released between the ages of 20 and 27 and to 21 percent when they get out between the ages of 28 and 39.
"You don't get as much bang for the buck when you increase the length of stay for older criminals," Kern said.
Sen. Kenneth Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, said the figures appear to show that youth is an "aggravating circumstance rather than the mitigating circumstance that most judges, prosecutors and others thought it was."
by CNB