PARTY AND RACIAL LINES DIVIDE LAWMAKERS ON PRISON REFORM

A wide gulf divides Hampton Roads lawmakers over how well Virginia's
punitive approach to crime and imprisonment is working.

The gap tends to follow partisan and racial lines.

Lawmakers agree that promoting public safety is a paramount concern; the
disagreement is over how to do it. Those who think the state's get-tough
policy has worked well tend to be white and Republican. Those who believe
that approach has been wasteful, possibly counterproductive, and would
rather rely more on crime-prevention measures and rehabilitation are more
likely to be black and Democratic.

View results There appears to be little common ground between the two
camps. In some cases, there isn't even a common understanding of current
reality from which to begin a discussion. For example, the existence of
racial disparity in drug-law enforcement is taken as a given by black
lawmakers but widely denied by their white colleagues.

After chronicling years of dramatic increases in incarceration and prison
construction, The Virginian-Pilot provided a synopsis of its findings to
area lawmakers and Virginia's statewide elected leaders and asked for their
reactions.

Many of their reactions were similar, if not identical. The Republican
legislative delegation issued a joint response. The three statewide
leaders, all Republicans, made many of the same points. All said the
billions of dollars Virginia has put into its mushrooming prison system has
been money well spent.

"Providing the funding to make Virginians safer was our duty -- and we made
the hard decisions to make sure Virginians would be less likely to be
victims of crime," the Republican lawmakers said.

"One cannot put a price on the peace of mind and safety of its citizens,"
said Gov. Jim Gilmore.

Even with the rising prison budget, "other pressing state needs are being
well funded and not shortchanged," Lt. Gov. John H. Hager said.

"To do something right it costs money; and by any measurable standard the
Virginia Department of Corrections is one of the best managed agencies in
state government," said David Botkins, a spokesman for Attorney General
Mark Earley.

Some Democrats pointed out that in 1995, four years before they lost
control of the General Assembly, they successfully resisted the efforts of
Gilmore's Republican predecessor, George Allen, to borrow $300 million for
additional prison construction.

"Our caution has been shown to be justified," said Del. Thomas W. Moss Jr.,
D-Norfolk, noting that even without the additional prisons, the state now
has thousands of surplus cells that it is renting out to other states.

"At a minimum of $50,000 per bed, this means we have spent at least $160
million on prison beds before they were necessary," Moss said. "These
dollars could have been used to meet pressing current capital needs in
transportation and school construction."

Del. Kenneth R. Melvin, D-Portsmouth, called the overbuilding "a
miscalculation of monumental proportions."

Supporters, critics speak out Republicans were uniformly supportive of
Allen's sweeping "truth in sentencing" initiative, enacted by large
bipartisan majorities in 1994, which abolished parole and dramatically
lengthened many criminal sentences.

"When we adopted the 1994 reforms, we knew that repeat offenders committed
three out of four crimes," the Republican legislators said. "These violent
felons served on average only one-third of their sentences. Instead of
worrying about having too many criminals in our prisons, we decided to
start worrying about having too many criminals on our streets."

Some Democrats who supported the Allen initiative said it is too early to
tell what its ultimate results will be. They noted that crime has dropped
in Virginia, but pointed out that it has also dropped in states that didn't
take such measures. They suggested that other factors such as the booming
economy could be at work.

Some said the state needs to examine the implications of keeping people
imprisoned into old age, as the cost of confining them rises and the
chances of recidivism fall.

"We need to look further at the possibility of elderly, nonviolent inmates
being released early, which would result in considerable taxpayer savings,"
said Del. William K. Barlow, D-Smithfield.

Local black lawmakers were among the few who opposed Allen's get-tough
program in 1994. Some, at least, remain convinced that it was a mistake.
"Now that we have no parole, there's no incentive to rehabilitate, there's
no incentive to get an education," said Del. Jerrauld C. Jones, D-Norfolk.
"What is the benefit, if you don't get any institutional credit for it?

"Those are the kind of short-sighted policies that we have adopted in the
name of a war on drugs that we're clearly losing. It is taxing our
governmental and societal resources, and in a way I think it is taxing our
humanity -- our ability to be humane and to believe in the basic redemption
of the human soul."

Gilmore has acknowledged that the war on drugs, the biggest factor behind
Virginia's incarceration boom, isn't having the desired effect of reducing
drug use or traffic. His answer is SABRE (Substance Abuse Reduction
Effort), a multi-faceted, $41.5 million program that would dramatically
increase many drug penalties while providing additional money for drug
treatment. He, Hager and Earley all reiterated their support for the proposal.

SABRE relies heavily on mandatory minimums -- legislated penalties that
allow judges little discretion in sentencing. Many such laws have been
enacted as part of drug-war initiatives around the country and have been
widely criticized by lawyers and judges because they are based largely on
the quantity of drugs involved, rather than the severity of the crime or
the culpability of the defendant.

Jones said such laws have produced some harsh and unjust results. He cited
the case of Kemba Smith, a Hampton University student who received a
25-year sentence in federal prison for her peripheral involvement in the
activities of her drug-dealing boyfriend.

Racial question still the thorniest Perhaps the widest gap came in response
to the issue of racial disparity in drug-law enforcement. As the Pilot's
investigation showed, black Virginians are arrested, tried and imprisoned
on drug charges in numbers vastly out of proportion to their drug use as
measured in national surveys.

Gilmore, Hager, Earley and the Republican lawmakers, all of whom are white,
addressed the issue by saying Virginia's sentencing guidelines were
designed to eliminate all disparity, racial and otherwise.

That is true, said Del. William P. Robinson Jr., D-Norfolk, who is black.
"The guidelines have helped at that stage of the process," Robinson said.
"But at the front end, the statistics support the conclusion that minority
populations are disproportionately targeted and prosecuted for these types
of offenses."

All of the black lawmakers who responded agreed that the disparity exists.

Just getting the issue into the open is a start, said Jones.

"When you say that black people are disproportionately incarcerated and
suggest that somehow there is white racism toward black people, white
people get nervous," Jones said. "Disclosure of these disparities is the
first major step. That sounds pretty basic, but that's where we are. We're
at square one in trying to deal with this issue."