Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 13, 1995 TAG: 9502130057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA LAFAY LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
``To release you at this time would diminish the seriousness of the crime and promote disrespect for the law,'' said a form letter mailed to her by the Virginia Parole Board. ``The board needs to see a longer period of development to warrant sufficient confidence to trust you with parole.''
Morton, 45, is a heavy woman with thick glasses and chronic heart disease. She operated a Richmond upholstery business with her husband before her arrest. The property in question was a U-Haul truck, which she says was rented in her name by her husband's girlfriend.
``I think I was sort of caught up in all this political mess,'' she said recently. ``It's almost like, once you get caught up in the system, you can't get out.''
A new law abolishes parole for everyone convicted of crimes committed after Jan. 1. Morton, one of about 20,000 prisoners in the state's 42 prisons, is not affected by the new law. She and thousands like her are judged by a parole board chosen by Gov. George Allen to replace what he called ``the liberal lenient'' board of the past.
During the last few years of its tenure, the pre-Allen parole board had turned down more and more inmates. The rate at which the board granted parole fell from 42 percent in fiscal 1991-92 to 28 percent by 1993-94. The new board has cut the number even more drastically: The grant rate for this fiscal year, which began July 1, averages 12 percent.
Virginia's parole grant rate is the lowest among the states with active parole boards. But the number of new admissions to the state prison system has remained fairly stable.
The result, according to corrections and government experts, is a crisis of overcrowding in the prison system and an expensive, illegal backlog of state prisoners in local jails. According to a survey for The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in Norfolk, one in five inmates in local jails in January belonged in a state prison.
``I believe in locking 'em up. But we have to have a place to lock 'em up,'' said Newport News Sheriff Clay Hester. Hester is one of seven Virginia sheriffs who have filed suits against the state to relieve the overcrowding in local jails.
During August and September, Hester noted, the overcrowding in his jail worsened. In July, the grant rate had dipped to 5 percent, an all-time low. In August, the rate was 9 percent.
State Sen. Joseph Gartlan Jr., D-Fairfax County, blames the crisis on Allen's ``get-tough'' approach to crime.
``This governor and the members of his party in this legislature have such a stake in making themselves appear tough on crime that they're virtually unmindful of the consequences of what they're doing,'' Gartlan said.
``We have approximately 3,000 prisoners across this commonwealth who are sitting in local jails at high expense and in crowded conditions creating not just security problems, but constitutional problems. That's the price they don't want to hear about. Lock 'em up. Keep 'em locked up. Crowd 'em up and don't worry about it.
``Sometimes I think it will take an Attica to make them realize what they've done. And that would be a terrible price.''
But Parole Board Chairman John Metzger says it's not the board's job to alleviate prison overcrowding.
``Prison overcrowding is something that ... must be addressed,'' he said in a November interview. ``But it shouldn't be used as a criterion for parole.''
In an effort to ease the problem and prepare for the upcoming no-parole era, Allen asked the General Assembly to approve a $402.7 million bond package for prison construction and expansion over the next five years. Although his proposal was voted down in committee, the Senate and the House of Delegates last week proposed their own bond packages.
The Senate's proposal would allocate a total of $364.8 million in bonds. The House, advocating a pay-as-you-go approach, endorsed $59 million in bonds to be combined with $28 million in cash. The houses must reach a compromise by Feb. 26. Whatever they decide, the expenditure is destined to be the largest of its kind in state history.
The money will pay for seven new adult prisons, two new juvenile prisons and expansions of nine existing institutions.
But corrections experts question whether Virginia can build its way out of the jail and prison overcrowding problem while maintaining the current parole grant rate.
``Any time you mess with either the number of people coming into prisons, the length of time they stay there or the number coming out, it's like damming up a river,'' said Patrick McManus, a former director of the Kansas Department of Corrections who has monitored prison overcrowding for the federal government in Georgia, Nevada, West Virginia and Hawaii.
``It's just going to back up,'' McManus said. ``And when the prisons get full, they'll back up in the local jails. It's going to cost Virginia taxpayers a ton of money, and, after it's all done, Virginia isn't going to be any safer ...
``They're quick to ask for tons of money for new prisons. But I doubt they've asked for any money for alternatives to prison. And the fact is, alternatives are much cheaper than prisons. But they do cost something. And if there is no money for alternatives, the only thing left is prison.''
All three proposed budgets this year contained money for alternatives. But the suggested amounts pale compared with the proposed funding for prison construction.
Allen's package, for example, calls for $250,000 for a residential facility, known as a diversion center, that emphasizes work, restitution and education. The House endorsed spending $1.5 million to build three diversion centers, plus $6 million for two boot camps for adult prisoners.
In addition to the costs of building new prisons, Virginia pays an average of $17,011 per inmate per year, or $340.2 million annually, for the current prison population. It would be worth the cost, some legislators say, if all those being denied parole were violent, dangerous offenders.
But are they?
Zadie Morton hardly qualifies as a dangerous criminal. But there is no way to find out how many prisoners like her - first offenders with no prior record - also are being denied parole. The Virginia Parole Board has an absolute exemption under the state's Freedom of Information Act. Since November, the board has refused to provide any data regarding the crimes of those they release or decide not to release on parole.
Del. Kenneth Melvin, D-Portsmouth, last month proposed a bill that would place some limits on the board's exemption.
``The Parole Board makes crucial decisions about people's lives, and we have absolutely no idea whatsoever what they're doing,'' Melvin said. ``We don't know the length of time they're keeping people in for, we don't know who they're letting out. As far as I can see, there's no rhyme or reason to it. They're working in the dark. We need to let some sunshine in there.''
Some limited statistics are available from the Department of Corrections. That agency says 27 percent of the inmates denied parole so far this fiscal year - 3,761 of them - had been convicted of nonviolent, non-drug-related crimes. The total cost to the state: $6.2 million per year.
Johnny Stewart, a first-time offender convicted in Portsmouth in 1990, is among Virginia's more expensive inmates. Because he is being held in a maximum-security prison, his annual upkeep is $17,656. His crime: stealing a friend's blank check, making it out to himself for $50 and cashing it.
Stewart was paroled in 1993 but was sent back to prison after three months because he violated the conditions of his parole by missing an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. That was a year and a half ago. Stewart, 34, came up for parole again in September. The board turned him down.
Stewart's form letter echoed Zadie Morton's: ``Your prior failures under community supervision indicate that you are unlikely to comply with the conditions of parole. To release you at the present time would diminish the seriousness of the crime and promote disrespect for the law.''
Now serving the fourth year of his eight-year sentence, Stewart is haunted by the missed AA meeting and by his 3-year-old daughter, Madison, who has cerebral palsy and was born while he was in prison.
He tried to attend that meeting, he says, shifting nervously in his chair in the visiting room at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. But the meeting was scheduled to start at 6 p.m. and his painting job at the Oceana Naval Air Station didn't end until 5 p.m. He had no car and no one to ask for a ride, and he had run out of the free bus vouchers given to him by his parole officer.
The meeting was 12 miles from his sister's house, where he was staying.
``I called the counselor and told him I would have to walk,'' he remembered. ``And he told me, `If you can't make it here by 6:30, don't bother coming.'
``I'm not going to say missing that meeting was right, because I should have been there. But nobody's perfect. Just ask yourself if you've ever had to miss a meeting. It'd be different if I was out there robbing, harming someone or robbing someone. But all I did was miss a meeting.
``I understand you have to be punished when you do wrong. But I'm starting on my fifth year for a check. When I started my time in 1991, U.S. congressmen were writing bad checks on the House [of Representatives] bank. And they all they got was slapped on the hand.
``Maybe I did travel the wrong path. But I've paid my debt to society. ... I got a 3-year-old little girl. My wife's having to live off [Aid to Families with Dependent Children] to take care of my baby because they're keeping me for something like this and I can't work.''
by CNB