REFORM TRUTH IN SENTENCING

Truth in sentencing, which was not supposed to increase penalties, has
actually accelerated a two-decade trend toward longer prison terms,
often out of proportion to the crime. This development is driving up
hopelessness and bad conduct among inmates and costing the state a
fortune. Worse, the state is skimping on rehabilitation, often pushing
released inmates on a track that leads right back to prison. Journal
Sentinel reporters Mary Zahn and Gina Barton documented this worrisome
mess in a four-part series of stories that ends Monday.

Gov. Jim Doyle and the Legislature - both implicated in this costly
muddle - should clean it up. They must:

Loosen the state's truth-in-sentencing law, which went into effect
on the last day in 1999 as one of the most rigid in the nation. It
should emulate the federal government and most states with truth in
sentencing and give the state Department of Corrections a bit of
wiggle room so it can reward and thus encourage good conduct and let
terminally ill inmates die at home.

Re-examine the criminal statutes with the idea of shortening maximum
sentences where appropriate. Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker,
a sponsor of truth in sentencing when he was in the Legislature, says
the intent of the measure was clarity in sentencing, not longer prison
terms. Yet a result, according to the Journal Sentinel analysis, is
longer prison terms.

The Sentencing Commission was set up as part of truth in sentencing to
monitor judicial practices around the state, study their impact on the
cost of corrections and make recommendations to policy-makers. It
should, as soon as possible, supply the Legislature with the data it
needs to make changes, with the goal of lowering maximums that are too
high.

Adequately finance the Sentencing Commission. The commission could
alert officials to costly trouble spots in the law, but a shoestring
budget hobbles the agency. Legislative leaders should also activate
the Joint Review Committee on Criminal Penalties, which they also set
up as part of truth in sentencing and then left out of the loop. The
committee is designed to give prison-impact statements on criminal
proposals in the Legislature. Both the committee and the commission
are designed to make up for the lack of planning that got the state in
its present prison predicament.

Drastically step up rehabilitation efforts inside and outside prison
walls. If a person is released from prison without money, without a
job, without skills, without housing, without prospects, how on earth
is he or she supposed to survive? Getting offenders off the prison
track and onto the job track is key to cleaning up the prison mess.

Make more use of alternatives to prison - such as house arrest,
mandatory drug treatment, intensive probation - for appropriate
offenders. Also key is adequate funding that will allow parole agents
to lower caseloads and beef up their community supervision.

In the era of indeterminate prison terms, a judge decided how much
total time a convicted defendant would spend both in prison and on
parole, and a parole board decided how to split the time between the
two forms of supervision. Under truth in sentencing, the judge takes
over the job of the parole board, but at sentencing. The virtue of
this method is clarity: All parties know at the start of a sentence
the exact length of a prison term.

But what has been sorely missing in law and order in Wisconsin is
planning. Lawmakers toughen criminal laws helter-skelter, without any
consideration of the impact of the changes on prisons or the treasury
- - a big reason the state now faces a $1.6 billion deficit it must
close in the next state budget. As attorney general, Doyle pushed
truth in sentencing, so he can't escape culpability for having failed
to adequately plan for it.

Of course, some very bad people deserve to stay in prison for a long,
long time - some for the rest of their lives. Clarifying sentencing
should not change this.

The bill for the inadvertent lengthening of sentences will ring up to
$1.8 billion through 2025. The prison system is on track to rival the
University of Wisconsin System in tax support, Zahn and Barton noted.
Doyle and lawmakers must take steps to avert that awful outcome.