THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1994 TAG: 9406220474
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY WARREN FISKE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940622 LENGTH: RICHMOND
``I have listened to thousands of Virginians who tell me they're fed up with a criminal system that coddles criminals rather than locking them up,'' Allen said during a town meeting program that was aired on public television stations throughout the state.
{REST} Allen revealed no new details of his plan - known as Proposition X - during the hourlong broadcast. He will convene the General Assembly on Sept. 19 with hopes of passing new sentencing guidelines that would require violent criminals to serve longer prison sentences.
The plan calls for eliminating parole, the practice of releasing prisoners who have served only a fraction of their sentences. It would also reduce from 300 to 60 the number of days each year that prisoners could, through good behavior, reduce sentences.
``Our goal is that (violent criminals) serve at least 85 percent of their sentences,'' Allen said.
About 75 people - many of them invited by the governor and sympathetic to his proposal - sat in the audience. There were several dramatic moments as victims of rape and families of people who were murdered by felons out on parole called for tougher punishment of criminals. Carol Schindler, a Newport News police officer, described how her colleague and fiance - Larry Bland - was murdered last month while on patrol. A parole violator is charged in the case. ``Through the failure of the judicial system, I have not only lost my partner and my best friend, but my fiance and the rest of my life,'' Schindler said.
But Julie McConnell, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union, warned Allen that violent crime will not decrease until the government gets serious about solving poverty. ``The idea that the abolition of parole will lower violent crime is implicitly based on the idea that there is a finite number of criminals,'' she said. ``I respectfully suggest that this is a fallacy.''
Allen hosted the show with two key advisers who are helping him form his no-parole proposal - former U.S. Attorney General William Barr and former federal prosecutor Richard Cullen.
Barr said that murderers in Virginia receive an average prison sentence of 36 years but are released - because of parole and lenient good-behavior policies - after having served 10 years. Rapists serve an average of four years of a nine-year sentence, he said, and armed robbers serve four years of a 14-year sentence.
``If we keep violent criminals incapacitated behind bars, that person won't be hurting other law-abiding citizens,'' Allen said.
Still unknown is the cost of his plan. Critics have said that building and maintaining new prisons could cost billions. Allen has said that some of the cost could be defrayed by developing alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent criminals and making prisons more efficient.
{KEYWORDS} SENTENCE PAROLE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
by CNB