THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 28, 1995 TAG: 9507280435
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
It didn't take long for Zee Lamb to get to work as a member of the board of directors for the National Association of Counties.
Lamb, elected to the post at a conference in Atlanta on Sunday, had been asked earlier in the conference to represent the group at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. So Lamb - the chairman of Pasquotank County Board of Commissioners - traveled to Washington on Thursday and delivered a statement on prison reform.
The Judiciary Committee is considering a broad crime bill and truth-in-sentencing legislation, a committee staff member said Thursday.
``The corrections crisis in our country is clearly the No. 1 problem facing county government in the area of criminal justice,'' Lamb said in a prepared text. ``When federal judges put population restrictions on state prison facilities to protect the constitutional rights of inmates - their actions inevitably impact on local jails.''
Lamb - who chairs the national association's Subcommittee on Corrections and the state association's Criminal Justice Steering Committee, and serves on the North Carolina Governor's Crime Commission - said he stuck fairly close to the statement he had spent most of the week preparing. ``It went great,'' Lamb said, ``I was nervous in anticipation, but when I started talking it went fine. It was just a real neat experience.''
Lamb told the senators that all levels of government need to cooperate on the prisoner population problem.
Counties' needs, Lamb said, are being overlooked in federal appropriations. He said a House of Representatives bill would give 15 percent of its funding to counties, reserving 85 percent for states.
``This is surprising in light of the fact that counties incarcerate virtually one-third of the nation's non-federal inmates in county jails and spend well over one-third of total state and county correctional expenditures,'' Lamb's statement says.
Lamb held out North Carolina as an example of state and local partnership in prisoner housing.
He said North Carolina counties deal primarily with nonviolent offenders, freeing state prison space for violent criminals. And he described the truth-in-sentencing efforts in the state's structured sentencing law passed last year.
Lamb urged the legislators to consider counties when formulating corrections policy.
``There are some who believe that we can simply build our way out of this crisis - in order to make sure dangerous people are locked up,'' Lamb's statement says.
``For more than 15 years, the National Association of Counties has pursued a policy objective that has taken us in another direction - that the best way to ensure that serious offenders are locked up is to prioritize our limited institutional resources.''
North Carolina is putting the finishing touches on a state prison complex in Pasquotank County that carries a price tag of more than $30 million and will add significantly to the county's economy. by CNB