THE COST OF BEING TOUGH ON CRIME

State's Stringent Habitual Offender Law Crowds Prisons

Alabama's prison overcrowding problems are bad enough that the state
is sending some inmates to an out-of-state prison. Part of the
problem, a report suggests, is that one-third of the state's prison
population is not going anywhere.

That would be the state's habitual offender inmates - those who can
get longer sentences, even life in prison without parole after their
"third strike" crime.

A lot of state's adopted such laws in the 1980s and 1990s as "tough
on crime" measures. The laws are popular with voters, therefore
popular with politicians, understandably. Who's going to vote for the
"let 'em off easy" candidate?

Alabama's habitual offender law is one of the nation's toughest. This
state and 15 others allow life imprisonment upon conviction for one
prior felony, according to an Alabama Sentencing Commission study
that examined the laws from state-to-state. Someone could be
convicted of three nonviolent crimes and get the same sentence as
someone who convicted of three violent offenses.

When someone commits a Class A felony such as murder, kidnapping,
first-degree rape, prior crimes are reviewed before "enhanced"
sentencing is used. In all other offenses, the court system doesn't
look at how serious the other crimes were.

More than half of Alabama's 8,600 habitual offenders got "enhanced"
sentences after a conviction for a property or drug crime, according
to the Alabama Sentencing Commission.

And Alabama can add more time to sentences than any other state.
Judges can add an additional 15-99 years or life imprisonment for an
habitual offender. South Carolina has the lowest range, letting judge
add between 1-5 years to a sentence.

Keeping so many inmates in prison for such a long time leaves the
prison system to deal with elderly inmates, something one research
said is "costing them a fortune." Furthermore, Tomislav Kovandzic, a
criminal justice professor at UAB who has researched three-strike
laws, said they don't do anything to reduce crime.

Some criminals deserve to be locked up for the rest of their lives
for the crimes they committed or to protect society from the crimes
they would commit if free.

It seems the problem with the habitual offender law is that it
doesn't allow much effort differentiate between those inmates and
others when that third offense is committed.

Alabama needs a habitual offender, but, as attractive as it seems the
state cannot afford to habitually apply the
lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key philosophy to all third-time offenders.