PATTON SAYS SOME PRISONERS MAY BE RELEASED

Governor Says State Can't Afford To Hold Them

Kentucky would release some felons from custody earlier than usual if the
state can't afford to keep them behind bars, Gov. Paul Patton said Thursday.

Patton said he is caught between a booming prison population and $509
million in projected budget cuts over the next two years. Unless the state
gets more revenue from tax increases or other sources -- which legislators
predict is unlikely -- the early release of prisoners is one possible
answer, he said.

"We have our prisons just as full as they can be," Patton told
Herald-Leader reporters and editors in a briefing on the state's budget
crunch. "And I think they're already stressed. They're already stretched in
terms of staffing."

The first prisoners to be sprung would come from the 3,200 low-level, Class
D felons held in local jails, with an emphasis on non-violent offenders,
according to a budget report the Patton administration released Wednesday.
The state pays local jails $27.51 a day for each state prisoner.

Patton didn't say what would happen to prisoners released early. Typically,
in such releases in other states, they are placed on home-detention or
monitored by parole officers until their sentence expires.

With six weeks left until the 2003 General Assembly begins, Patton said he
would rather legislators raise more revenue to ease the massive shortfall
instead of slashing spending to prisons, schools, Medicaid and libraries.
Patton said Kentucky already has trimmed $464 million in the last three
years and drained $680 million from its "rainy-day" fund.

However, Patton would not specify what measures he might support, such as
an increase in the cigarette tax or expanded gambling. Patton said he wants
to start a public discussion about the serious risks of deeper budget cuts,
not put anti-tax legislators on the defensive with suggestions for tax
increases.

"We're not proposing a solution, we're trying to establish the magnitude of
the problem," said the governor, who ends his second and final term in
December 2003.

In response, top legislators -- particularly in the Republican-controlled
Senate -- said they don't oppose the early release of non-violent
criminals, while they do oppose higher taxes.

"I am sure that there are people incarcerated that could be managed in a
community setting more efficiently," Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly,
R-Springfield, said Thursday. "It's probably something we ought to look at.
It's very expensive to warehouse someone who's not a threat to the community."

Neither the House nor the Senate is likely to approve the "major tax
increase" that would be necessary to avoid the budget shortfall Patton
fears, said House Majority Leader Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg.

More than 11,000 prisoners live in Kentucky's 12 state-owned and two
private prisons, at an annual expense of $17,849 per inmate, according to
the state Corrections Department. More than 4,000 state prisoners live in
local jails, halfway houses or other places.

Admissions at state prisons rose 41 percent in the last decade, due largely
to an increase in drug prosecutions, and the average sentence expanded from
12.3 to 15.5 months. To accommodate a growing inmate population, the state
plans to open an $88 million, 894-bed prison in Elliot County in 2004. But
Patton said there is no money to hire prison staff.

Reducing sentences for felons could anger more than the prosecutors and
police who put them behind bars. Local jailers might be dismayed; many
jails rely on revenue from housing state prisoners. The state pays local
jails $10,041 a year for each prisoner.

"We built these big local jails at the specific request of the state to
help them house state inmates. They told us, 'You build 'em big, we'll fill
'em,' " said Daviess County jailer Harold Taylor, president of the Kentucky
Jailers Association.