ALABAMA PAROLES THOUSANDS OF INMATES, PRISON CROWDING STILL UNSOLVED

MOBILE, Ala. - Alabama's experiment with increasing paroles for thousands
of inmates didn't bring on the crime wave some feared, but it didn't solve
Alabama's prison crowding problem either. Now the state is running out of
nonviolent inmates who are likely candidates for an early release, the
Mobile Register reported. In September 2003, Gov. Bob Riley got the
Legislature to create a second state parole board to speed up the release
of nonviolent felons. Since then, 4,174 prisoners have been released
through the second parole board's special dockets.

That's on top of the 1,820 paroled through the normal process and the more
than 13,500 whose sentences ended or who started the probation portion of a
split sentence.

But nearly two years later, Alabama prisons, work release centers and boot
camps hold 23,874 inmates - nearly twice their designed capacity of 12,943.
That doesn't include another 3,370 people who are waiting to be transferred
from county jails, are serving time in privately run prisons in other
states or are housed in alternative arrangements. "I don't think anybody
assumed that this would relieve the crowding conditions. That's not the
intent of the second board," said Donal Campbell, who became Alabama's
corrections commissioner when Riley took office in January 2003.

The "second board" is a three-member panel appointed by Riley that began
hearing cases in December 2003. The idea was to speed consideration of
parole for thousands of eligible prisoners, giving freedom months or years
earlier to those judged to pose the least risk to the community.

One of the first to face the new board was Valentino Arso, a 39-year-old
Mobile native serving a life sentence for a 1996 auto theft. The judge
meted out such stiff punishment because of Arso's criminal record, which
includes convictions on drug and first-degree assault charges. The new
parole board granted Arso's release in December 2003. He told the Mobile
Register that he dove into every prison rehabilitation program he could find.

"During my confinement, I received God into my life. And it changed my
life," he said. "I got myself in trouble. I'm not going to put it on anyone
else. ... You've got thousands and thousands in there that won't admit
their problem." Now living in Whistler in southwest Alabama, Arso said he's
earning his commercial driver's license and hopes to work as a truck driver
and give talks to youths. His parole officer, Monica Norwood, said Arso so
far has made the grade. His only infraction in the last year has been a
fine for failure to have his grandchild in a car seat.

Some academics and advocates maintain that Alabama's prisons - and those in
other states - are filled with thousands of people like Arso who can safely
be released as long as they have access to the right drug treatment,
education and job training programs to break their criminal habits.
Advocates for reducing prison populations said states ought to start early
release with the inmates serving time for property or drug offenses. In
Alabama, such inmates make up more than 43 percent of the total, according
to the Department of Corrections.

"Unfortunately, what we're doing in our country - and it's not just Alabama
- - is we're incarcerating a lot of people who aren't dangerous," said Robert
Sigler, a criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama.
Alabama's governor, a conservative Republican who has long taken a
traditional law-and-order stance, would seem an improbable candidate to
engineer such a radical reordering of the criminal justice system. As
governor, Riley's foray into prison reform was a matter of necessity. He
inherited a corrections system that many experts concur was badly
underfunded and overcrowded. Judges at both the federal and state levels
had ordered the state to reduce the overcrowding, and Alabama voters had
rejected his plan to raise taxes by $1.2 billion.

Riley's Plan B was to increase paroles and hire more parole officers. The
state posted a 31 percent increase in paroles from 2002 to 2003. That was
the second-highest percentage increase in the nation, behind only North
Dakota, according to a U.S. Justice Department report prepared last summer.

Although it was more dramatic in Alabama than in most other states, the
increase in paroles mirrors a nationwide trend.

According to figures compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003 saw
the largest increase in America's parole population since 1992, which saw a
7.4 percent jump from the previous year. Lauren Glaze, a statistician with
the Bureau of Justice Statistics, attributed the increase to attempts by
states to deal with budget pressures. She said they have employed a variety
of strategies, including increasing the number of intermediate sanctions
and exercising greater reluctance to imprison "technical" parole violators
- - people who fail drug tests or break other parole rules but who do not
commit new crimes.

In Alabama, many of the parolees came out of work-release centers where
they were working in regular jobs and interacting with the public while
being locked up at night.

Cynthia Dillard, assistant executive director of the parole board, said
most of the parolees are now working and paying taxes in the private
sector. Of the 4,174 granted early release, the board has revoked parole of
471, either for committing new crimes or violating parole rules. That's a
recidivism rate of 11.2 percent.

"It's still unrealistically low. ... We expect it to go up," said parole
board Director William Segrest.

By contrast, according to statistics compiled by the Department of
Corrections, 37 percent of all Alabama inmates released in 1999 were back
in prison by 2002. Among those released on parole, it was 22 percent.
Parole board officials attribute the early success rate to their
selectivity. The problem now for parole board officials is they have run
out of likely candidates for early release.

"We have considered everyone in the prison system. Now we're concentrating
on the backlog of violent cases," Segrest said.