SENTENCING PLAN WOULD FREE UP LOGIC

Georgia's prisons are packed. Crime is down. Whether the gigantic
increase in incarceration deserves a lot or only a little of the
credit for the drop in crime, one thing is certain: Getting tougher on
criminals has gotten too tough on taxpayers.

Over the past five years, Georgia's prison growth has been at or near
the top in the nation. In the past couple of months, the inmate
population has surged past 50,000 for the first time and is now
approaching 51,000, with nearly 3,000 inmates backed up in local jails
because there's not room for them in state facilities. The costs had
been rising in sync, doubling since 1993 to $1 billion, but the
budget-strapped 2003 General Assembly cut next year's Office of
Corrections' budget by $41 million. If the situation continues much
longer, Georgia will be forced to repeat unhappy history - asking
the State Board of Pardons and Paroles to find a few thousand inmates
to cut loose early.

There is an alternative. If it is launched quickly, a new sentencing
system designed by a recent Governor's Commission could help avert an
early-release program and slow the exploding growth of inmates, as
well as reduce disturbing disparities in sentences by race and region.
When the commission's report was issued in December, few saw the need
for the dramatic changes it recommended. Now, there is little choice.

The prisons aren't being swamped by a jump in a crime - the number
of offenders sent to prison has barely changed in more than a decade.
Instead, the tidal wave of inmates has been whipped up by tougher laws
and policies that have collided to create the criminal justice
system's version of a perfect storm: lawmakers enacting mandatory
minimum sentencing laws, judges handing out stiffer sentences, and the
parole board keeping everybody longer behind bars.

A Two-Pronged Strategy

Former Gov. Roy Barnes saw the clouds gathering and in 1999 appointed
a group of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement
officials, victims' representatives and others to figure out how to
stop the pattern before the next early release became inevitable.
Their answer: establish a uniform set of sentencing guidelines. The
Governor's Commission on Certainty in Sentencing - a follow-up
commission led by one of the state's most respected judges and one of
its most respected district attorneys - designed a guidelines system
for Georgia.

The commission's plan does two basic things. First, it establishes
specific sentencing recommendations that would allow the state to
predict how many prisons it needs and, more importantly, give it the
ability to decide which types of offenders should go to prison and how
long they should stay. The commission was tough on violent and career
criminals, sex offenders and drug dealers: They would get locked up,
in many cases, for longer than they do today. Judges could depart from
the guidelines if the individual circumstances of a case demanded, but
in general, the state for the first time would choose as a matter of
policy which people should live in a $20,000-a-year taxpayer-funded
cell. In addition, the commission proposed shrinking the power of the
five-member parole board to release inmates, so the prison terms
announced in open court by local judges would be served in full or
close to it.

Second, the plan outlines a strong system of supervision for the
nonviolent, drug-addicted offenders who would not go to state prison
under the guidelines. Instead of having to choose between punishment
and rehabilitation, judges could assign this group to an "options
system" that would deliver a blend of both at the same time. Offenders
would be offered drug treatment, but those with dirty drug tests would
find themselves quickly climbing a ladder of sanctions that leads to
the detention center. Those who show up for treatment and stay clean
would work their way down the ladder, earning fewer restrictions on
their liberty. Such a system, with offenders receiving swift and
certain doses of penalty and reward for their behavior, might be
called "managed punishment."

A Viable Alternative

Using a similar carrot and stick approach, special "drug courts" in
Georgia and elsewhere have cut recidivism by 50 percent working with a
few hundred offenders at a time. The options system proposed by the
sentencing commission would apply the strategy to an estimated 6,000
offenders per year, a scale large enough to make a dent in
drug-related crime that could be felt in every community across
Georgia. There are costs to creating the system, to be sure, but the
price is far less than new prisons or new crimes by offenders simply
released to probation and parole as we know them.

After nearly 20 years of frustration with the current war on drugs,
judges, prosecutors and the public all seem to agree that "something
else" must be done with addicted offenders. But a clearly defined and
credible alternative has been missing. With strong support from Gov.
Sonny Perdue and the Legislature, sentencing guidelines and managed
punishment can become that alternative, a port in the storm that
rescues us from the paralyzing platitudes of liberals and
conservatives alike. With the state budget busting and the prisons
bursting, the sentencing commission offers a workable plan that
strikes the right balance between public safety and public spending.