NONVIOLENT CONVICTS FILL STATE PRISONS

Alabama courts have sent more people to prison for drug possession than for
the violent crimes of murder, manslaughter, rape and robbery combined.
Second to possession is drug distribution.

None of the top five crimes for which people are sent to prison are violent
offenses, according to an analysis of five years of data in the Alabama
Sentencing Commission's 2005 report.

That breakdown could change if legislators adopt a commission proposal
aimed at sending fewer nonviolent offenders to prison, to make room for
violent criminals.

"The war on drugs needs to encompass what you do with them once you catch
them, and obviously prison may not be the most effective alternative.
Long-term drug treatment for some offenders may well be the most effective
weapon in the war on drugs," said Rosa Davis, chief assistant attorney
general who works on the commission.

"Some of them just need to be locked up. The drug users may need
treatment," she said.

The proposal, called Sentencing Standards, would involve a point system
based on an offender's current offense and criminal history. Separate
worksheets for drug, property and personal offenses would cover 26 crimes.

Take an arrest for selling marijuana. The offender would get six points for
the crime. He also could receive points for prior adult felonies, juvenile
felonies, misdemeanor convictions, probation or parole revocations, and use
of weapons. A sentence other than prison, either work release, probation or
community corrections with rehabilitation, is recommended for a score of
one to seven in a drug crime. Prison is recommended for eight or more
points, with the sentence length determined by another worksheet.

The standards also could reduce wide sentencing disparities for the same
crime. Now, a judge in one county might give a 10-year sentence for a drug
crime that draws an 18-month sentence somewhere else.

The standards would be voluntary for judges.

Not conforming:

The commission's report is one of several studies and analyses of the
state's prisons released in recent weeks as the Legislature deals with the
General Fund budget, of which the prison system is a big chunk.

The reports show that Alabama's criminal justice practices are out of step
with much of the country, giving the state the nation's fifth-highest
incarceration rate. Of 8,800 admissions to Alabama's prisons in 2004, 4,298
people were locked up for third-degree burglary, theft, felony DUI and drug
possession or distribution, the commission's report shows.

Another new report, by the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, points to
lengthy drug sentences as a key reason Alabama's prison population has
jumped from 6,000 prisoners in 1979 to 27,000 now.

"Alabama's sentencing laws, ineffective use of probation, unregulated and
politicized parole procedures and an underfunded prison system have
conspired to create one of the highest incarceration rates in the world,"
the EJI, a Montgomery law firm that represents poor people and advocates
for prison alternatives, states in its report Part One of Criminal Justice
Reform in Alabama.

Urges mandatory use:

In the last 20 years, drug offenders in prison have increased 478 percent,
while other offenders have increased 119 percent, EJI found. The average
length of a drug sentence in Alabama was more than eight years, compared
with 41/2 years in the rest of the country.

The group makes a number of suggestions, some of which dovetail with the
commission's proposals. But EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson said he
believes the Sentencing Standards should be mandatory. "I'm not as
confident that any kind of voluntary scheme is going to get us where we
need to go," he said.

EJI also singles out the disparity between drug possession sentences and
DUI sentences. People could spend more time on a first drug possession
offense than on a fourth DUI conviction.

Nearly 75 percent of people convicted of felony DUI - which means they've
had at least three previous DUI convictions - are white men. Fifty-nine
percent of people imprisoned for marijuana possession are black men.

"We know both locally and nationwide that alcohol-related offenses are much
more dangerous, much more costly, much more threatening to public safety
than simple possession," Stevenson said. But, he said, "It's an offense
that doesn't have the kind of race and class features that marijuana issues
do."

EJI suggests that sentences for marijuana possession should be reduced to
mirror those for DUI.

Maintaining the truth:

The proposed Sentencing Standards would come close to doing so.

The Sentencing Standards bill has passed out of both the House and Senate
judiciary committees with little opposition.

Although the standards would reduce the number of people sent to prison and
the sentence lengths for nonviolent offenders, they also would usher in
more "truth in sentencing," which could keep some inmates in prison longer.
Truth in sentencing, which prosecutors and victims have called for, means
offenders serve their full sentences instead of getting early paroles.

With Alabama's prisons at 200 percent of capacity, the state cannot handle
the explosion in population that other states have seen with
truth-in-sentencing laws, Davis said.

"Truth in sentencing is what everyone wants, and we're trying to do that
while protecting public safety - without any money," she said.