Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 18, 1994 TAG: 9409270011
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In such statements lie the gravest danger facing Gov. George Allen's Commission on Parole Abolition and Sentencing Reform. Sentencing reforms like those proposed by Stolle's subcommittee could do some good. But they're in danger of being oversold, and they shouldn't be expected to do more to fight crime than they reasonably can.
Clearly, the General Assembly must look carefully at the added costs of longer sentences. Even the Allen administration estimates that construction and operating costs could near $800 million over the next 10 years - a figure much lower than other estimates, and one that does not include the costs of de-facto tougher parole policies already put into effect under Allen.
The biggest potential benefit of the sentencing proposals is their assurance, via the abolition of parole and related measures, that violent criminals will stay behind bars for a very long time. In retaining limited "good-time" parole under another name, and requiring a probationary period for all prisoners after expiration of their sentences, the recommendations also address two serious reservations about a no-parole system that prison officials and others had raised.
A secondary benefit of greater certainty about the amount of time convicted criminals actually will serve is that it would allow greater certainty in state planning. This isn't unimportant - corrections is one of the fastest-growing items in the state budget - but it does not bear directly on crime-fighting.
Indeed, whether stricter sentencing in general does much to fight crime is at best unclear. Criminals don't tend to be accountant types, toting up the risks vs. rewards of their actions. Quadrupling the number of prisoners in America hasn't made the nation feel safer, nor has it improved the per-crime arrest and conviction rate.
Even so, keeping a murderer or rapist in prison for 15 to 50 years instead of five to 15 would help. The subcommittee was on the right track in distinguishing between violent crime, for which penalties are to be made stricter, and nonviolent crime, for which they're not.
But the subcommittee's inclusion of some drug violations in the violent-crime category merits a second look; it may be an unwise blurring of a useful distinction. And insufficient attention to alternatives to imprisonment for nonviolent criminals is more than a cost issue: Prison tends to harden those criminals who go there - a point that argues for longer sentences for the already hardened, but for shorter sentences or alternative punishment for those convicted of lesser crimes.
The subcommittee's brief did not include crime-prevention efforts. But to restore the public trust of which Stolle spoke, prevention is key.
As of the day the recommendations were made public, Roanoke still had reported no murders for the year; in Richmond, the 1994 figure had already surpassed 100. Yet the same state sentencing laws cover both cities; obviously, there's more to fighting crime than sentencing reform.
by CNB