MORE PEOPLE SENT TO PRISON FOR BREAKING PROBATION RULES

RICHMOND, Va. -- An increasing number of people on probation or parole who
have not committed new crimes are being sent to prison for breaking their
release conditions, according to a new state report.

Officials said the upswing illustrates a national trend of states using
scarce prison space for people who break the rules that govern their freedom.

As states grapple with rising prison populations, many, including Virginia,
are taking careful inventories of prison populations to determine who
really needs to be there.

"There's some thought out there that if you just leave a lot of these
people alone, you'll never see them again. They may not be model citizens
or members of the Rotary Club. They'll likely be a drain on society in some
respects, but they won't be a danger to the public," said Richard Kern,
director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. "We need to be
able to determine who that population is."

The number of people sent to prison in Virginia without new criminal
convictions climbed 47 percent from 1998 to 2002, to 1,551 people, about a
tenth of the total number of people imprisoned that year, according to a
survey by the commission, which monitors sentencing practices in the state.

During the five years, 6,269 criminals being monitored by probation and
parole officers were returned to prison for breaking their release
conditions in ways that did not involve new convictions--offenses known as
technical violations.

Most often they repeatedly skipped appointments with their officers, failed
drug tests or just disappeared without permission.

In 1990, Chris Olsen was convicted of burglary and forging checks--crimes
he says he committed for drug money. A judge put him on probation and gave
him a suspended prison sentence, which he didn't have to serve unless he
broke his probation rules.

Four years later he was sent to prison after getting caught using cocaine
and forging more checks. He was released on parole in 1998, then sent back
again on a technical violation of disappearing _ changing addresses without
telling his probation officer, Olsen said.

Now 38, working for a concrete company in Harrisonburg and attending weekly
meetings at a halfway house, Olsen said the state should do more to prepare
inmates for parole.

"They can't really teach you all the things you need to know while you're
in there, and then they just push you out and say, 'now do it,"' Olsen
said. "You can't imagine how hard it is."

Of the people who had their probation or parole revoked in 2002 in
Virginia, 63 percent lost their freedom because of technical violations, a
rate consistent with nationwide figures.

"There's a gross imbalance between what these people did and their
punishment. The misconduct that has sent them to prison is not even, by
definition, a crime," said Jeremy Travis, a senior fellow at the Urban
Institute in Washington, D.C.

But probation and parole officers say they need to be able to threaten
people with prison time.

People are more likely to behave if they know they could be locked up, said
S. Dean Hahn, president of the Virginia Probation and Parole Association.

"There have been a lot of creative and effective sentencing alternatives
and I applaud those, but the bottom line is, for us to have any validity,
we have to be able to send people back to the parole board or a judge,"
said Hahn, deputy chief of probation and parole in Loudoun, Fauquier and
Rappahannock counties.

"We can't just keep giving them bites of the apple," he said.

A variety of factors has led to the rising numbers of imprisoned technical
violators.

More people than ever are under supervision, and they often face tougher
scrutiny. Probation and parole offices across the country are providing
closer supervision and immediate punishment, as well as using technology
that allows better detection of drug use.

After Virginia abolished parole in 1995, felons were required to serve at
least 85 percent of their sentences, and the state often had little control
over the prisoners after their release. So judges began building suspended
prison time into sentences.

In addition, "There's a risk-aversion mentality in the world of
supervision," Travis said. "No one wants to be the parole officer whose
parolee does something bad, so the officers end up violating them more often."

Despite declines in crime and arrest rates, the Virginia Department of
Corrections expects the state's prison population to grow slightly more
than 4 percent annually through 2009, when the state could be responsible
for nearly 45,000 criminals. The state held 35,249 prisoners in 2003, at an
average cost of more than $20,000 per inmate.

"We're getting this stacking effect, first because the average length of
time people are spending in prison is longer and second because the number
of technical violators going to prison is increasing," said Barry R. Green,
Virginia's deputy secretary of public safety.

Led by Texas, states recently have been paring back the number of
imprisoned technical violators before prison growth becomes unmanageable.

"There's a lot of innovation either under way or in development across the
country," Travis said. "It's really because of the fiscal crisis states are
facing. The bottom line is, it's really, really difficult to pay for prisons."

A study last year in California found that two-thirds of that state's
parolees end up back in prison. California is preparing to cut the number
with home detention, electronic monitoring and additional drug treatment.

Illinois wants to develop halfway houses where people on parole and
probation can go instead of prison, and legislation in Washington state
would cap at 60 days the prison time a parolee could get on a technical
violation. A New Jersey panel has recommended a similar move.

The Virginia study is part of the Criminal Sentencing Commission's 2003
Annual Report and is the first time since the state abolished parole that
the commission has closely analyzed violations by people on probation or
who have been released from prison.