STATE SEEKS ANSWERS FOR JAMMED JAILS

Officials Explore Alternate Means For Handling Offenders

Officials searching for answers in dealing with Georgia's growing prison
population are hearing a wide variety of opinions about what should come
next. Legal professionals in Columbus are no less divided than others.

"You'll get as many opinions on this subject as there are persons in the
system," Muscogee Superior Court Judge John Allen said. "We all keep
searching for ways to deal with it."

Georgia's prison population topped 50,000 for the first time, reaching
50,922 in May and prompting some state officials to consider shorter
sentences for non-violent offenders.

Judges across Georgia are working to balance the need to punish criminals
with cost and justice, Allen said.

Superior Court judges are studying how to implement a new set of sentencing
procedures developed by former Gov. Roy Barnes' Commission on Certainty,
Allen said. The procedures help judges sentence more consistently across
the state by providing detailed guidelines for each offense.

"It will be within the guidelines of the law," Allen said, "but we would
have ranges that we would be working with that would give some
predictability to the Department of Corrections in the number of beds they
would need."

Allen also supports sentencing non-violent offenders to alternative programs.

"They should be sentenced to treatment -- confined, but sentenced to
confinement," Allen said.

But alternative treatments and standardized sentencing can go only so far
in slowing prison population growth, the judge said.

"It's really in the hands of the legislature," Allen said. "They keep
making laws forcing mandatory sentences because that's what the public
wants... If that's what the public wants, then the public has to pay for it."

Lawmakers must balance the public's desire to punish criminals with the
fiscal realities of a tight budget, said State Rep. Tom Buck, D-Columbus.

"From a standpoint of the public, people in general want people who commit
crimes to do the time," Buck said.

Budget shortfalls are forcing prison facilities to lay off employees and
cut programs, though. Without more funding, the facilities could become
dangerous, Buck said.

Defense attorney Richard Mobley said he was not surprised that Georgia
ranks first among states in percentage of the population in prison, on
probation or on parole.

"This is obviously something that was going to occur when they started
these mandatory sentences," he said. "We're about to get to the saturation
point."

Mobley supports alternative sentencing options, especially for non-violent
drug offenders.

"I think that if you get somebody off his crack cocaine usage, then
obviously he is not going to go out to steal to support his habit," Mobley
said.

Rehabilitation can help young drug offenders stay out of prison and out of
the criminal cycle, defense attorney Rick Smith said.

"The only real way to fight the drug business is going to be legalization
like we have for alcohol," he said.

Muscogee County District Attorney Gray Conger argues that people in prison
should remain there and believes most people behind bars are violent offenders.

"The answer certainly is not to turn people loose from prison," Conger
said. "Prisons serve a very necessary purpose, and prisoners serving time
in prison are not going to be out there committing more crimes."