OVERCROWDING OF PRISONS IS GROWING

Officials Visit Two Facilities To Get First-Hand Look At Problem

INDIANAPOLIS - Leaders of Indiana's judicial and legislative branches visited two
overcrowded state prisons yesterday with Gov. Joe Kernan, who wanted to initiate
discussions about taming the growth in the Department of Correction population.

"The purpose of today's visit was to let us take a look first-hand at
the sorts of challenges the prison system is facing here in Indiana,"
Kernan said. "We come today with no solutions but instead the idea
that we can work together, pool our resources and look for ways to
impact the situation in Indiana."

Indiana's prison capacity is slightly more than 16,000, but the state
is currently housing nearly 23,000 inmates. The prison capacity does
not include about 1,800 beds that have been readied but never used,
because of budget constraints.

Kernan, along with Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard, House
Speaker Pat Bauer and Senate President Pro Tem Robert Garton, visited
the Rockville Correctional Facility, a medium-security center where
1,182 women are staying in areas with a certified capacity of 624.

They also visited the Putnamville Correctional Facility, a
medium-security prison that has a certified capacity of 1,650 but
where 2,285 male prisoners are housed.

Later the group offered only a glimpse of the ways they might tackle
the overcrowding problem. Building additional prisons was not high on
the list.

"We would have to add two or three more prisons every few years" to
keep up with the growth in the prison population, Bauer said. "That
will become our economic development program. That's not a very good
economic development program."

The leaders seemed intent instead on finding solutions that did not
increase the prison system's $1 billion budget, although the governor
said leaders should review all options.

Kernan said the Department of Correction is revising its
classification system, which could help more offenders qualify for
work-release programs. He said the General Assembly should consider
letting prisoners out earlier if they complete some education programs.

Bauer said the state also should consider earlier release for
prisoners who complete drug rehabilitation programs. And Bauer and
Garton said the legislature needs to reconsider the state's sentencing
structure, which includes mandatory minimum sentences for many offenses.

"It's time to review the determinate-sentence provisions. They came
about because of public attitudes, public pressures," Garton said.
"They thought there was too much latitude being exercised in
sentencing. It goes in cycles, and I think it's time to review it."

A legislative committee already is reviewing the sentencing laws, but
Garton said the group got a late start when all the appointments were
not made immediately.

"This is not a partisan issue, it's not a Republican and Democrat
issue," Garton said. "It's a public-policy issue."

There was virtually no discussion yesterday about opening up the
roughly 1,800 prison beds that have been built but never used. The
Department of Correction said yesterday that it would cost nearly $30
million to open and staff the additional space. Full programming for
the expansion could cost another $8 million, said department
spokeswoman Pam Pattison.

Opening those beds "falls into the category, into the mix of things
that obviously would cost additional dollars," Kernan said. But he
added, "Everything should be on the table."

Increasing the number of educational and drug rehabilitation programs
(which are not currently available at every prison) also would cost
more money, Department of Correction Commissioner Evelyn Ridley-Turner
said.

She said there are waiting lists now for every program offered by the
prison system.

Currently, about 2,800 inmates are enrolled in active drug treatment,
while 1,900 remain on the waiting list, Pattison said.

The desire for drug treatment is likely even greater. Only those
inmates who are within two years of their earliest release date are
allowed on the waiting list, she said.

And the overcrowding has exacerbated the problem.

"At one point at Rockville, we saw a room where until recently there
had been a drug rehabilitation program, but the demand for beds is
such that the room where this occurred had to be used to stack more
beds," Shepard said. "It now being full of beds, the drug
rehabilitation effort had to be canceled.

"This is kind of interesting and a distressing byproduct of what the
department has to do in order to manage the increase in demand."

Kernan said he invited the leaders to visit the prisons after meeting
six weeks ago - shortly after he became governor - with Ridley-Turner
and other justice officials.

"They convinced me this is a situation that is serious, that it's a
public safety issue and one that they believed needed to be looked at
and talked about and we needed to come up with some solutions," Kernan
said.

He added that by next year the state "will be bumping up against what
would be any kind of reasonable capacity, assuming that the same kinds
of trends that took place in previous years continue. That is why I
believe it was not only important to begin this discussion but there
was some urgency about it as well."