Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 15, 1995 TAG: 9502230030
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Of course it shouldn't. But that's exactly what could happen - as it has in years past - if the state persists in refusing to take seriously the need for alternative punishments for nonviolent crimes.
Severe overcrowding of local jails is giving Virginia sheriffs a sneak preview of what life could be like under the new no-parole laws initiated by Gov. George Allen and passed last year by the General Assembly. In large part, the current overcrowding in local jails reflects the state's failure to match popular get-tough sentencing policies with the requisite amount of costly prison construction.
On average, according to a survey by The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Virginia's local jails are holding 85 percent more than the number of inmates for which they were built. Some 20 percent of Virginia's jail inmates - those sentenced to three or more years - shouldn't be there at all, the survey found, but state prisons have no room either.
Such overcrowding heightens tensions and makes more difficult the job of monitoring jails for trouble. It makes riskier the work of sheriffs and deputies, and heightens the danger to minor offenders who increasingly must rub shoulders with truly tough customers.
The new sentencing laws have been in effect only since Jan. 1, so they can't be held responsible for current overcrowding in jails. But with the decline in recent years of the Parole Board's parole-grant rate, the effect is much the same as if the new laws had been in effect for some time.
Virginia has built its share of prisons: Corrections is a perennially serious contestant for the dubious honor of fastest-growing item in the state budget. And, under Gov. Allen's plans, Virginia will continue to build prisons - probably $300 million to $400 million worth over the next five years.
Even so, it almost surely won't be enough if all the emphasis is on punishment and none is on prevention, and if petty crime gets caught up in the same approach as the serious, repeat, violent and predatory crime for which longer sentences are needed.
Yet, of the nearly 3,800 state-prison inmates denied parole in Virginia since July 1, more than a quarter had committed nonviolent, non-drug-related crimes. Meanwhile, administration and legislative proposals for diversion centers, substance-abuse treatment, alternative sentencing and other options are minuscule compared with prison-construction plans. This is plainly not smart.
Among those recently denied parole, according to news accounts, was a 45-year-old woman in the 17th month of an eight-year sentence for failing to return rental property on time and failure to appear in court. Another was a 34-year-old man in the fourth year of an eight-year sentence for stealing a friend's blank check, making it out to himself for $50 and cashing it; paroled in 1993, he was returned to a maximum-security prison for missing an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Both are first offenders.
Does the public safety really require such people to be locked up for years at huge cost to taxpayers? Wouldn't their cells, and those costs, be better reserved for the armed robbers, rapists and murderers?
by CNB