PANEL OKS TRUTH-IN-SENTENCING REPORT

MONTGOMERY A panel studying Alabama's criminal sentencing practices voted
Monday to recommend revamping the system over the next four years by
adopting "truth-in-sentencing" measures, abolishing parole and making
convicts serve full prison terms.

The Alabama Sentencing Commission, which has studied the state's sentencing
system for the past two years, also voted to recommend a major expansion of
community punishment alternatives for non-violent convicts and the hiring
of more parole officers.

"We need a wide array of sentences other than to an overcrowded
penitentiary where they can't be held accountable," said Rosa Davis, chief
assistant attorney general and member of the commission.

The commission, which will make its report to the Legislature at the
session beginning next week, voted Monday to recommend at least a $5
million expansion of community corrections programs, which now are
available in only about a third of the state's counties.

Such programs are designed to keep state felons in their home counties,
make them work and pay back victims for stolen property or other damages or
put them in substance abuse or other treatment programs.

The commission also will recommend the Legislature appropriate at least $1
million to hire 28 more parole officers. Gov. Bob Riley already has
transferred to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles $1 million in
emergency money as part of a plan he filed in federal court to reduce
severe crowding at Tutwiler Prison for Women.

The commission also is considering recommending a $1.3 million expansion of
drug treatment programs for 180 offenders over the next year at $7,500 each.

Davis said a new sentencing system should be implemented over the next four
years to give judges time to become familiar with new voluntary sentencing
standards; to give the state time to find options other than prisons for
non-violent convicts; and, to measure the effects of the new sentences on
prison crowding.

If the Legislature approves, the Sentencing Commission in July will provide
judges a manual that identifies offenders considered most likely to be held
accountable to the public through community punishment alternatives.

In the second year of the phase-in of the new sentencing system, the
commission would recommend that judges start imposing new sentences based
on the times convicts will actually serve.

For example, a convict who gets a 10-year sentence today may serve only
about three years in prison. The new standards would recommend the convict
serve the full three years, then have a year of mandatory supervision by a
parole officer.

Since the new standards would be voluntary, the commission for one year
would study the sentences that judges actually imposed to measure their
effects on prison crowding.

The standards then would be fine-tuned before their permanent adoption in
2006, at which time parole and time-off sentences for good behavior would
be abolished, Davis said.