HERE'S HOPING EX-GENERAL WINS PRISON REFORM FIGHT

Retired two-star Army Gen. Jim Donald says he's a people person, which
is why he can run Georgia's prisons effectively: "We're all about
people," he says.

His theory is that "we should decide who we are afraid of vs. who we
are mad at." The ones we're afraid of - the really bad guys - we
should lock up and throw away the key. The ones we're just mad at -
the ones who will come out and be our neighbors some day - we should
take the opportunity to train and counsel for a better life after prison.

What a refreshing view. Too bad it's a view not supported strongly by
the state budget.

Donald is pushing a vision for Georgia's prison population, currently
topping 47,000, that includes gradually moving 80 percent of them out
into the community through halfway houses, treatment centers and
diversion centers. He wants to get the folks who did something stupid,
as opposed to something violent and evil, the tools they need to go
back into society and make better choices. If the goal is better
public safety, he believes, this will work. If the goal is just
keeping people locked up, the prisons will just keep getting more
crowded and expensive. At current rates, the number of inmates will
rise by 11,000 in the next five years.

Yet Gov. Sonny Perdue's budget proposal for 2005 calls for reducing
funding for counseling and education at the prisons, as well as
delaying the opening of several community-based facilities that are
under construction. At the same time, Perdue has promised to move
1,000 more inmates into already crowded state prisons from county jails.

Donald tosses off that setback as crisis management in a terrible
budget year.

"We will open those centers," he said, pointing to statistics that
show inmates serving time in the state's Atlanta Day Reporting Center
where inmates come to work, then go home at night --- have only a
7 percent rate of return to state custody after their sentences are
served, compared to 27 percent for the rest of the prison population.
The thought of "spending more time with 1,000 of their closest
friends" keeps most of the folks coming through the day reporting
center from going astray again, says Donald.

And that saves a lot of money for the state. It costs $17.5 million a
year to operate a 1,000-bed prison. "For $17.5 million, we can open
and operate 34 day reporting centers," said Donald's assistant, Brian
Owens.

The governor's proposed budget does call for increasing funding to the
Atlanta Day Reporting Center and for opening the 192-bed Bleckley
Probation Detention Center, both of which are good
investments.

As Georgia's prison population has doubled in the past 10 years, the
number of nonviolent felons in the system has also doubled to about
20,000. Those are the people whom Donald sees as candidates for his
approach to reducing state expenditures, reducing the prison
population and creating better citizens in the future. But alternative
sentencing of nonviolent offenders that would send them into drug
treatment and rehabilitation, job training and housing programs will
require cooperation from the courts, the Legislature and the governor.

Getting help from all those parties will test Donald's ability as a
"people person."