SENTENCING LAW GOOD, NOT PERFECT

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of North Carolina's structured
sentencing law - the law that ended parole and standardized penalties
for crimes and sought to make sure that when a sentence was handed
out, the criminal actually served that time.

Has structured sentencing worked? In many ways, it
has.

Crime-fighters often credit tougher truth-in-sentencing laws enacted
during the 1990s for providing a drop in the crime rate.

It makes sense. If the criminals are behind bars, they're not out on
the street committing more crimes.

Before the law took effect, sentencing in our courts was, in many
aspects, a joke. According to the Department of Correction, offenders
on average were serving 18.3 percent of their sentences.

For example, someone sentenced to serve six-and-a-half years for a
felony would likely be behind bars for only 14 months.

Is there any wonder that criminals would sneer when judges handed down
tough sentences? Now when judges announce sentences, criminals don't
laugh.

If a judge tells a criminal he'll serve a minimum of 18 months in
prison, he can pretty much expect to do the time for the next year and
a half.

It's good that violent criminals are behind bars. It's also good for
crime victims. Now if the person who perpetrated a crime is given a
certain sentence, the victim can pretty much expect the criminal to
stay in prison for that period of time, unless the case is overturned
on appeal.

The system, however, is not perfect.

As a result of structured sentencing, North Carolina taxpayers had to
build enough prisons to hold 12,000 additional inmates.

Currently, there are 36,203 inmates incarcerated in state prisons -
enough people to make up a mid-sized town in North Carolina.

As the state's population continues to grow, more prison space will be
demanded unless some changes in state law are made.

The first change that the North Carolina General Assembly should
consider is reducing the incarceration of nonviolent criminals.

A statistical analysis on the Department of Correction Web site shows
that 11,339 people are in North Carolina prisons for nonviolent
offenses. That's nearly one half of the prison population.

Non-violent offenses include breaking and entering, larceny, auto
theft, fraud, forgery, worthless checks, drug charges, DWIs, traffic
violations and other property offenses. Non-trafficking drug offenses
alone account for 3,058 of the inmates.

The Department of Correction estimates that it costs an average of
$21,141 to keep one prisoner behind bars for one year. That means that
North Carolina taxpayers are paying about $64.6 million a year to keep
non-violent, non-trafficking drug offenders in prison every year.

There are a lot of things we like about the state's structured
sentencing - its predictability, its effectiveness in keeping
criminals off the streets.

It just needs some fine-tuning. In particular, changes should be made
in state law so that taxpayers spend less money keeping non-violent
offenders behind bars.