LAWMAKERS MAY SOFTEN DRUG PENALTIES TO CUT PRISON COSTS

OLYMPIA - After a decade of passing pit-bull-tough sentencing laws,
legislators are now suddenly discussing ways to get softer and smarter on
crime - as a way to save money.

For years, the Olympia mantra has been to increase penalties to deter
crime. But skyrocketing prison costs are causing many lawmakers to concede
stiff sentencing hasn't always worked well, especially with drug offenders.

"We filled up the prisons and didn't do a good job on treatment," said
state Rep. Ida Ballasiotes, R-Mercer Island. "There's a lot of us who think
we should save our prison space for our most violent offenders, and these
aren't them."

A Ballasiotes bill that came before the House Appropriations Committee
yesterday reflects the new tenor of the crime debate. House Bill 1006 would
free judges from stiff mandatory sentences for drug crimes and give them
freedom to put some offenders into treatment programs in lieu of more
prison time.

The bill is popular. It was approved unanimously by the House Criminal
Justice and Corrections and has the backing of prosecutors, judges and most
lawmakers.

Ballasiotes says the bill probably would have flopped just a few years ago,
but rising prison costs are changing the way lawmakers look at sentencing
laws.

The state's prison tab is the fastest-growing piece of the state budget.
Washington's prisons cost the state almost $500 million annually, and costs
are snowballing by almost 20 percent every two years, more than twice as
fast as the budget as a whole.

There are now 14,300 prisoners in the state; a fourth of them are in for
drug offenses. The state Caseload Forecast Council estimates that drug laws
passed during the past decade are responsible for about 4,000 inmates now
behind bars.

At an estimated cost to the state of $23,000 per inmate per year, the
drug-sentencing laws are costing the state about $92 million a year.

Meanwhile, the state is renting cell space in Colorado while it builds new
prisons.

Rep. Dow Constantine, D-Seattle, has proposed a bill that would go further
than Ballasiotes' in trying to keep drug criminals from clogging prisons.

His bill, HB 1859, would give judges the leeway they had in 1988 to give
"first-offender waivers" to people convicted of drug crimes for the first
time. Instead of being forced, for example, to give a first-time offender
21 to 27 months of prison time for selling drugs, the judge could impose a
much smaller sentence and couple it with treatment.

While Ballasiotes' bill would give a judge the right to split a sentence
between prison time and treatment time, Constantine's bill would give
judges the authority to go outside the overall sentencing guidelines in
cases where offenders have no prior convictions.

The bill is considered too radical by some, including some prosecutors who
think it gives judges too much leeway, but Constantine thinks its time will
come, too.

"It's an important conversation for us to have," he said. "We are being too
indiscriminate in how we determine who we're going to lock up for long
periods of time.

"We've got to figure out how to be smarter on crime and punishment. If
we're wasting money and throwing away lives that could have been turned
around, that's just wrong. And it's particularly wrong for all of us who
are paying for it," Constantine said.

Jim Lynch's phone message number is 360-943-9882.