DATE: Wednesday, October 22, 1997           TAG: 9710220508

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   52 lines

ALLEN SAYS PRISON PROGRAM IS GEARED TO NEEDS LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE PREDICTS STATE WILL HAVE TOO MANY INMATE BEDS IN 3 YEARS.

Gov. George F. Allen on Tuesday denied a legislative committee report that predicted the state will have 4,000 more prison beds than inmates in three years.

Allen said the new prisons will be used to reduce crowding. ``I don't see us having any empty prison beds,'' he said.

The surplus, reported by state budget analysts Monday to the House Appropriations Committee, would come three years after Allen talked the General Assembly into borrowing funds for prison construction. At that point, the state will have 4,000 too many prison spaces, the analysts said.

Democratic lawmakers blamed the potential excess on Allen's tough-on-crime zeal to end parole, and the resulting need for more cells.

The administration had projected that the state would need from $200 million to $500 million worth of new prisons to house a growing number of inmates. That's not necessary now, said Jim Roberts, deputy director of the House committee staff.

The state should use that money to build or renovate schools, said committee member Del. Clarence E. Philips, D-Castlewood.

``We have over $2 billion in emergency needs for school construction in Virginia,'' he said Tuesday.

Mark C. Christie, the Republican governor's attorney, said the room for 4,000 new beds, now under construction, will reduce double-celling in Virginia's prisons. He said that, as of the end of August, there were 24,761 inmates in state prisons, 8,555 more than base capacity.

By 2000, when the prisons now being built are completed, Christie said forecasts call for 28,400 inmates while prison capacity will be 19,800. Even then, many prisoners will still have to share cells.

But the Allen administration has never made it a priority to reduce double-celling, said Philips.

``The administration made a decision to double-bunk,'' he said. ``I frankly don't think the prisoners ought to have the luxury of being one to a cell. Why should schoolchildren in southwest Virginia finance a new cell for each prisoner?''

Allen also said that even if additional prisons are not built right now, the planning the state has already done will save time if more prisons are needed later.

Christie said Democratic legislators were playing partisan politics because they were upset about Allen's initiative to abolish parole. Allen credits parole abolition for a 16 percent drop in violent crime since 1993. KEYWORDS: PRISON JAIL POPULATION

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