HYPOCRISY ON CRIME

LAST WINTER , Gov. Paul Patton decided to cut the Kentucky budget by
releasing 883 prisoners months before their sentences were to expire.
Lawmakers were appalled.

They said public safety was at stake. They accused the Governor of using
the issue to alarm the public and win support for a tax increase.

Then, when four of the former inmates committed serious crimes, the
Governor suspended his early-release program.

But a few weeks later, the General Assembly committed one of its most
hypocritical acts in a cynical year: Lawmakers created their own
early-release program -- with no discussion -- by simply inserting language
into the 337-page budget bill.

As Sen. Richie Sanders, the Senate budget committee's chairman, admits, "We
just accepted it because it was going to be some savings to the state."

The General Assembly's early-release program shortens the sentences parole
violators must serve by giving them credit for the time they spent on
parole. The Corrections Cabinet says other states are doing the same thing.
It has lobbied for the change for several years.

But Kentucky's commonwealth's attorneys and victims' advocates are opposed.
They say the result will be that juries and judges will be fooled into
believing that defendants will serve more time than they will.

Who's right? The Corrections officials or prosecutors? It's hard to know --
the issue was never publicly debated.

Here are some questions that should have been asked, but weren't: Was the
crackdown on crime of the 1990s too strict? Should prison sentences be
shortened after all?

If prisoners are to be released early, what are the best criteria to use?
Does this plan, which gives parole violators a break, leave parole officers
"with no hammer . . . to use to control a parolee," as Senate Judiciary
Committee chairman Robert Stivers suspects?

In the end, this is just one more example of the irresponsibility of the
2003 General Assembly. Lawmakers were determined to pass a budget, but
refused to face up to the real job -- and real costs -- of delivering what
Kentucky needs.

The result is a string of superficial and deceitful solutions to serious
public policy problems. Education, health care, social services, the
criminal justice system -- all were handled in this shameful way.