Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 17, 1994 TAG: 9408170090
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BOB EVANS NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS NOTE: above
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
More imprisonment, even by targeting violent offenders, doesn't always lead to less crime, they say.
Parole abolition and sentencing guidelines for judges can reduce racial bias and geographical disparities in sentencing, these experts say. Such measures also can help states better predict how many prison beds will be needed and can increase public confidence in the justice system.
But those steps have their costs, these and other experts say. Virginians would have to pay millions of dollars to build prisons. And without a parole board, the state loses its discretion to make judgments about which individuals to keep behind bars longer.
Allen's Commission on Parole Abolition and Sentencing Reform announced the basics of an $850 million crime-fighting plan Tuesday. It calls for eliminating discretionary parole for new offenders, increasing the actual time violent criminals serve by 100 percent to 700 percent, and continuing use of statewide sentencing guidelines by judges.
Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr and former U.S. Attorney Richard Cullen, co-chairmen of Allen's Commission on Parole Abolition and Sentencing Reform, say their no-parole, truth-in-sentencing approach is similar to federal reforms under Presidents Reagan and Bush.
Coupled with longer sentences for violent criminals, this strategy can deter crime, Barr and Cullen say. Because of this, state court prosecutors in Virginia and elsewhere often look for ways to take cases to federal courts instead of state courts, they say.
But Timothy Matthews, staff director of the American Probation and Parole Association, disagreed. ``If you want to see an example of a screwed-up system, look at the federal government,'' said Matthews, whose group helps set standards and train probation and parole officers nationwide.
Critics of federal crime policy say the best place to see the federal system at work is Washington, D.C., where prosecutors and courts adhere to the federal system alone. In most states, most criminal cases are brought in state courts.
Washington, D.C., led the nation in incarceration in 1992, with 1.3 percent of its population in prison. The district also led the nation in violent and nonviolent crime that year, according to the FBI.
The federal government and Washington, D.C., aren't unique, Matthews and others say.
Louisiana in 1992 had the highest incarceration rate of any state, 478 per 100,000 residents. It also ranked sixth nationally in total crime that year. South Carolina had the second-highest incarceration rate that year and the sixth-highest violent crime rate.
Barr said Tuesday that those states failed to stem crime with incarceration because they didn't target violent offenders for dramatically longer sentences, as Allen's commission recommends. Instead, he said, those states simply increased the sentences of all criminals.
But in 1984, the state of Washington enacted reforms very similar to the steps Allen, Cullen and Barr advocate. Discretionary parole for new offenders was abolished, judges used sentencing guidelines and actual prison time for violent offenders increased by 50 percent.
In a decade under this system, Washington state has increased some penalties even further, but the overall crime rate has not declined. The violent crime rate has increased 43 percent - more than the national average.
Barr said he was not familiar with Washington state's record. He said it is obvious that confining a violent criminal longer will keep him from committing a new crime and therefore will at least reduce the crime rate compared to what it would have been if the criminal remained free.
Locking more people up for longer periods has a minimal effect on crime, the bipartisan National Academy of Sciences concluded after studying crime statistics from 1960 to 1982. It concluded in the mid-1980s that doubling the nation's 1982 prison population might reduce the crime rate 10 percent to 20 percent at best.
Since 1982, the nation's incarceration rate has more than doubled while violent crime increased 32 percent by 1992, according to the FBI. Total crime - violent and nonviolent - has gone up and down but remains about the same.
Social science journals abound with articles by criminologists who say harsher punishments don't decrease crime because the roots of crime grow from social factors such as unemployment and education. So few crimes are solved - usually less than 30 percent - that there could be little or no effect on crime rates anyway, they say.
They add that the ``common sense'' view espoused by Allen and Barr - that punishment deters crime - doesn't hold true because crooks usually act on impulse, under the influence of drugs or in the belief they won't get caught.
There is even less reason to believe that eliminating parole curbs crime, say more than a dozen judges, prosecutors and criminologists interviewed in recent months.
Aggravated assaults are the most common violent crimes, according to FBI statistics. Paul Lipscomb, a circuit judge in Oregon, said the typical aggravated assault involves someone who gets drunk.
``If they're drunk and they're in a fight, they're not going to think `I'm going to get 15 years' or whatever, much less when they'll be eligible for parole,'' Lipscomb says.
Policymakers tend to assume everyone thinks just like them - in a rational, well-thought-out manner, Lipscomb said. But an unemployed high school dropout with a transient lifestyle and few close friends or family members has a different outlook on life.
``There are a lot fewer social disincentives operating on them to keep them on the straight and narrow,'' he said. ``You and I have a lot more to lose.''
Only 13 states and the federal government do not have discretionary parole for newly convicted felons, according to the Association of Paroling Authorities International. Instead, most states have responded to criticisms of parole by restricting their parole board's authority, eliminating mandatory parole or increasing the time an inmate must serve before becoming eligible for parole, said M. Kay Harris, associate professor of criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia.
But the publicity that comes from taking a strong step such as abolishing parole is too alluring for many politicians to resist, she said.
North Carolina, for example, abolished discretionary parole, brought it back to handle overcrowding, and this year will abolish it again. All within 15 years.
Many states that banned parole in the 1980s filled their prisons to the point that courts ordered them to release inmates, he said. Without a parole process, those states had to free criminals without any individualized review of who is more or less likely to kill someone, he said.
``He can be the baddest guy in the prison, and when his time is up, his time is up,'' Matthews says.
David L. Fallen, executive director of the Washington State Sentencing Commission, said that when his state and others eliminated parole and established sentencing guidelines 20 to 25 years ago, they were responding to problems such as public criticism of parole boards and judges, racial and geographic bias in sentencing, and overcrowded prisons.
He and others from states that have adopted this approach say states are more able to predict and plan for prison populations.
They caution, however, that states should go beyond the simplistic approach of locking up more people and get to the causes of crime, because each year a new group of criminals comes of age.
``Everybody's looking for a quick, magic bullet,'' said James Ellis, a Circuit Court judge in Portland, Ore., for 25 years. ``We should be looking at teen-age pregnancy. That's the major producer of our business here. Teen mothers usually don't raise good citizens.''
by CNB