THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409180060
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
In 1992, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder's Task Force on Violent Crime decided that Virginia's labyrinthine parole system should be overhauled so that violent criminals would serve longer sentences. A legislative committee was formed to study the issue and come up with a plan.
The resulting Commission on Sentencing and Parole Reform, largely composed of Democratic lawmakers, met for the first time in August 1993. The panel's members talked about the law. They talked about the system and how it worked. They talked about what other states had done.
They were still talking last November when GOP candidate George Allen won the governor's race after a campaign based on fighting crime by abolishing parole.
Now, on the eve of a special session during which legislators are scheduled, beginning Monday at 10 a.m., to consider Allen's plan to end parole, the Democrats are struggling to reclaim the issue as their own.
At stake is control of the General Assembly. Democrats today hold a slim majority in both the Senate and the House of Delegates. All 140 members are up for re-election next year, and polls indicate that crime is the number one issue on voters' minds. No one can afford to look weak on crime.
``As I see it . . . this idea of being tough on crime is so hot politically that people are trying to out-tough each other,'' said J. Samuel Glasscock, a former Democratic delegate from Suffolk.
``They're trying ever more draconian measures just so long as they don't have to cough up the funds right now. The cost of this isgoing to be horrendous.''
So far, the Democrats' struggle to upstage Allen on the crime issue has been sporadic and disorganized. As Allen - flanked by the relatives of murdered Virginians - promoted his plan across the state this summer, the Commission on Sentencing and Parole Reform hastily put together its own alternative plan and tried to sell it as tougher than the governor's.
But the Almand plan - named after Del. James Almand, D-Arlington, the commission's chairman - was unveiled only two weeks before the session. And it failed to capture the public's imagination the way Allen's plan, called Proposal X, has done. One reason could be that it sounds more complicated, and cannot be reduced to a sound bite. The Almand plan requires inmates to serve minimum sentences without parole, after which their sentences could be doubled if a public safety commission deems them a continuing danger to society.
Allen called the Almand plan ``a last-minute excuse for delaying and preventing action during the special session.'' The plan, he said, ``preserves the worst attributes of the current lenient and deceitful parole system.''
Meanwhile, 31 of 40 senators and 74 of 100 delegates signed on to be co-patrons of Proposal X. Two Democrats - Del. Glenn R. Croshaw of Virginia Beach and Sen. Virgil H. Goode of Rocky Mount, agreed to sponsor the bill.
Another Democratic attempt to steal the governor's thunder came last week when Lt. Gov. Donald S. Beyer Jr. suddenly launched a tour of the state to announce that Allen's plan isn't tough enough because it doesn't apply to the 7,500 inmates locked up in Virginia's prisons. Beyer stepped forward with a tougher plan: make the abolishment of parole retroactive.
``Allen has made a fatal blunder trying to pull a fast one on the public,'' proclaimed Democratic strategist and Beyer adviser Paul Goldman. ``The public assumes that he's talking about keeping the folks in jail now. . . . George Allen has got to decide whether he told the people the truth. . . . The Democrats should hold his feet to the fire.''
But Beyer's move backfired.
For one thing, it was widely regarded as a transparent political ploy. For another, the retroactive abolition of parole is seen as a violation of the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against ex post facto laws (laws increasing the punishment of those who have already been sentenced.) The day after Beyer made his announcement, state Attorney General James S. Gilmore released an opinion calling his proposal unconstitutional.
``Lt. Gov. Beyer's newfound enthusiasm for abolishing parole is political posturing,'' Gilmore said. ``His plan is nothing more than a Keystone Kops approach to crime that would be laughed out of court.''
Although some legislators have questioned the cost of harsher measures, few are questioning their effectiveness. Outside the 13-member Legislative Black Caucus, there is little talk about crime prevention, and even less about rehabilitation.
``The only group I can can think of (opposing the abolishing of parole) is the Black Caucus,'' said Del. William P. Robinson Jr., D-Norfolk. ``There may be some other individual legislators, but I can't name any.''
Del. Jay DeBoer, D-Petersburg, is one of them.
DeBoer, who calls the issue ``the abolishment of the word `parole,' '' thinks the current parole system should be corrected, not eliminated.
``We could bring in guidelines that would prohibit a parole board from paroling repeat violent offenders at all,'' he said this week. ``But no one wants to go into that kind of detail. It's much easier to just say, `Let's get rid of it.'
``It's just so annoying to me to see the public willingly led into such an expensive, relatively ineffective way of spending money. . . . The public knows it's not going to work. The public knows it's going to be expensive. But they want it anyway.
``They have been convinced that the adult version of the bogeyman is lurking in the closet. That there is a predatory crime wave out there going after Mr. and Mrs. America. And that's not true. There's no such thing.''
KEYWORDS: PAROLE REFORM VIRGINIA by CNB