SEEING IS BELIEVING

Legislators should see need for sentencing reform Friday, August 20, 2004
"Until you walk through it, you really don't understand what the facilities
are like," Gov. Bob Riley said as he toured four state prisons this week.

What he saw was too many prisoners, in too cramped space, guarded by too
few corrections officers. "We've got to do something about the number of
inmates," he said.

Alabama legislators, who budget the money that state prisons operate on and
pass the laws that send offenders to prison, should make similar visits to
the state lockups. Maybe they would come away with a greater appreciation
for the need for sentencing reform.

Riley is a believer. A week after visiting Donaldson prison in western
Jefferson County and the Birmingham Work Release Center, the governor spent
four hours Monday in four prisons in Elmore County. With his prison
commissioner, Donal Campbell, at his side, Riley saw 356 men at Staton
prison packed like sardines in a windowless sheetmetal building that used
to be canning factory. At times, he was told, there's only one officer to
watch over the convicts.

Despite the progress the state has made since Riley took office less than
two years ago - under the gun of federal and state courts - Alabama prisons
remain dangerously overcrowded and understaffed. Some 23,600 inmates are
still crammed into space for 12,400.

Riley has reduced prison crowding by speeding up paroles, expanding
community corrections and sending some inmates to private, out-of-state
prisons. But more needs to be done: more drug and mental health treatment
programs, more work release and more community-based options.

And, of course, the state must move forward with common-sense changes in
how judges mete out punishment. The Legislature can do that by passing into
law the recommendations of the Alabama Sentencing Commission.

The commission spent four years examining sentencing in the state,
reviewing some 14,000 criminal cases. It found that sentences can range
widely for the same crime, that sentences handed out hardly resemble actual
times served, and that habitual offender laws needlessly lock up some
nonviolent offenders for long periods.

The commission's recommendations are designed to bring more consistency,
honesty and fairness through new voluntary sentencing guidelines. They
would lower minimum sentence ranges for certain crimes and tighten them for
others, while not changing sentences for more serious crimes such as
murder, rape and robbery.

It is a smart form of truth in sentencing.

Alabama's prison system didn't get in such wretched shape by state
officials being smart. And lawmakers weren't truthful to the people of this
state about how their tough-on-crime laws helped fuel the explosion in the
prison population.

They have a chance to change that. Riley sees that. Lawmakers need to see
it, too, even if it means having to spend some time behind bars.