ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 3, 1996 TAG: 9608050023
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
note: below
The Virginia Department of Corrections' new list of state parolees has become a hot seller, but the state ACLU believes it may be illegal.
Last month, Virginia became the first state in the nation to offer the public the name, address, offense, sex and race of every parolee. Judging from demand, a lot of Virginians are interested.
But in a letter Thursday to Gov. George Allen, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia suggested the program may violate state privacy law.
``Unless you retract or significantly redesign this policy, it will surely be used in future years as a study in how state policy should not be made,'' wrote Kent Willis, executive director of the state ACLU.
He said that the ACLU ``strongly recommends that you immediately cease implementation of this policy and that you begin anew by introducing a bill into the 1997 General Assembly asking the legislature to study the need, constitutional issues and the practical consequences of this policy.''
David Botkins, a Corrections Department spokesman, said the attorney general's office approved the policy.
Botkins said notices mailed to the 10,000 parolees comply with the notification requirement.
The parolee list costs $5 per ZIP code, or $37.50 for all parolees across the state.
As of Thursday, the department had received 625 inquiries, and 230 responses were sent out - numbers that outpaced expected demand.
Requests have come from neighborhood watch groups, local police agencies and the FBI.
Willis said the program ``amounts to a third form of punishment'' that wasn't included in the original sentence.He said the state was ``almost encouraging vigilantism by making this information available and [implying] that your lives are in jeopardy unless you have it.''
If the goal of corrections is to integrate people who have served their time back into society, the state is undermining the goal by stigmatizing parolees, Willis said.
Botkins denied that the state was stigmatizing anyone. ``Convicted felons have already stigmatized themselves by committing crime,'' he said.
He said the department wasn't forcing the information on anyone. ``It's not like we're hawking it on the street corner.''
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