TOUGHER SENTENCING LAWS BEHIND GEORGIA'S INMATE GROWTH

ATLANTA - Before slashing Georgia's corrections budget, state lawmakers
should consider that they helped create the inmate-population explosion
that has the prison system bursting at the seams, key legislative leaders
said Thursday. The stricter sentencing laws the General Assembly passed
during a tough-on-crime fervor in the 1990s have contributed heavily to one
of the nation's highest incarceration rates.

"We've taken a lot of discretion away from the judiciary . and created a
monster of a system," said Rep. Alan Powell, D-Hartwell, chairman of the
House budget subcommittee with jurisdiction over prisons.

Powell's comments came as representatives of the two departments in charge
of state prisoners, probationers and parolees briefed lawmakers on deep
cuts proposed in the agencies' budgets.

To comply with across-the-board spending reductions ordered by Gov. Sonny
Perdue, the Department of Corrections is planning to close three state
prisons and 10 detention and diversion centers, including the Savannah
Diversion Center.

The $847 million 2005 budget, $69 million less than the corrections
department is spending now, also would force furloughs and layoffs.

The job losses would leave the prison system with barely enough
correctional officers to be considered safe, said Alan Adams, the
department's assistant commissioner. All but legally mandated library
services, educational offerings and counseling programs would be
eliminated, he said.

Adams predicted that, without the kinds of programs that help rehabilitate
inmates, the proposed cuts would increase recidivism.

"Unfortunately, the things we're having to (cut) are those very things that
have an impact on them coming back," he said. "We're going to guarantee
safety for the public before we make (inmates) change their behavior."

Michael Light, a member of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, said the
almost doubling of Georgia's inmate population - from 25,000 in 1992 to
47,500 last year - is due in large part to laws the legislature passed
during the mid-1990s.

Stiff mandatory sentences now are required for defendants convicted of the
most serious violent crimes, while the "two-strikes" law cracks down on
repeat offenders.

Then in 1998, the board adopted a policy requiring defendants in the most
serious cases to serve at least 90 percent of their sentences.

"We've created some very tough laws," said Sen. George Hooks, D-Americus,
former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "(Prison officials)
are not doing anything but following directions of the laws we've put on
the books."

The proposed cuts now are in the hands of Perdue's Office of Planning and
Budget. The governor will make his budget recommendations to the General
Assembly in January.

Adams said that even if the reductions go through, his department will do
everything it can to find jobs elsewhere in the system for employees of the
facilities due to be closed.