Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 29, 1993                   TAG: 9401140019
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A15   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DON'T JUDGE PROPOSAL BY BAD FIGURES

You write that Allen's promise to abolish parole will cost up to $2.7 billion. These numbers, used by Terry's campaign, were cooked up, at taxpayers' expense, by the Department of Public Safety. Yet, you don't point out that even the author of those figures, Virginia's secretary of public safety, Randy Rollins, has admitted they are greatly exaggerated. At a meeting recently before a legislative subcommittee, Rollins stated that the ``numbers are calculated in the extreme.'' He acknowledged that the numbers he has used for months misrepresenting the cost of abolishing parole are not based on Allen's plan.

Under questioning from legislators, Rollins revealed that the estimates don't take into account Allen's proposal to restructure sentences when parole is abolished. Allen's proposal follows the federal model, which was passed with bipartisan support nearly 10 years ago and is currently in effect. While federal sentences have dramatically increased time served by violent offenders, Rollins' numbers are based on outlandish projected increases in time served.

Rollins also concedes that the forecasting model used by the Department of Corrections is based on existing rates of recidivism. Thus, it does not even take into account the principal benefit of parole abolition, which is that violent offenders would spend more time in prison and be unable to commit crimes during their longer periods of incarceration.

Furthermore, he acknowledged that his numbers do not reflect alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders, which Allen has proposed.

Finally, and most outrageously, the $2.7 billion price tag that the Department of Corrections uses for Allen's program is based on estimated costs accumulated through the year 2016 - a period extending 23 years. That is six governors' terms.

Allen has stated repeatedly that the actual cost of his parole program will be $15 million in operating expenses for the 1994-'96 biennium. Prison construction over the next two years will cost $319 million. Over the course of the next 12 years, capital costs will total $638 million.

The Wilder administration's estimates on abolishing parole, which the Terry campaign uses, are misleading and dishonest. Virginians are entitled to know the costs of Allen's proposals, but they should not be subject to state-authorized distortions worked up at taxpayers' expense.

If the Roanoke Times & World-News editorial writers subscribe to the Terry philosophy that supports lenient parole over the Allen plan to abolish parole, that is your prerogative. But let's try to rely on fact rather than blatant misrepresentation when editorializing.

JAY TIMMONS

Communications Director

George Allen for Governor campaign

RICHMOND

Editor's note: The Oct. 24 editorial stated that: ``The extra prisons alone, according to Department of Corrections' data, would cost some $1.1 billion to $2.7 billion to build and another $500 million a year to operate.''