VA. PRISON SPACE SURPLUS EVAPORATES STATE SEEKS WAYS TO EASE CRUNCH

DANVILLE - The surplus of prison cells the state struggled to fill only a
few years ago is gone, state senators were told yesterday. Officials said
that with state lockups at capacity, Virginia needs to consider
alternatives to prison time for some low-risk offenders.

A soft economy that has produced the sharpest decline in state revenue
collections on record also corresponds with a rise in crime, Dick Hickman,
a Senate Finance Committee staff budget analyst, said at the committee's
annual retreat.

More nonviolent offenders are being ordered back to prison for technical
parole violations while violent and repeat offenders serve longer terms as
a result of Virginia's 1994 law abolishing parole, Hickman said.

The three trends, along with the closing of the state prison at Staunton,
present lawmakers with a potential crowding problem that was alleviated a
few years ago by a massive prison construction program in the 1980s and
'90s. The problem arises as they struggle to fill a $2 billion hole in the
state's budget.

Funding, flexibility needed For parole violators, a less-expensive and
more-effective option to returning them to prison would be greater use of
diversion programs and overnight detention centers that allow offenders to
hold jobs and even help pay their keep, Hickman said. The state takes in
about $1 million a year from such payments.

"You will need additional funding for that and you will need to encourage
judges to make greater use of these alternatives," Hickman said.

Offenders are being sent back to jail or prison in increasing numbers
because the Department of Corrections and probation and parole officers
"are more pro-active in finding these technical violators," he said.
Normally, technical violations include flunking a drug test or failing to
keep an appointment with a parole officer.

Committing convicts to prison for a technical violation is at least three
times more expensive than a diversion program, not counting the costs of
building the additional prisons that would be needed to accommodate them,
Hickman said.

"And right now, there are no additional funds to expand anything," he said.

Those not sent to prisons are ordered into local jails, causing crowding
there and irritating local governments already disaffected by reductions in
state funding.

Not so fast "Some jails . . . call the state and say, 'Get these prisoners
out of my jail,' and others say they can stay as long as they want because
of the revenue they get from holding them," said Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle,
R-Virginia Beach.

About 1,100 Virginia prison beds are occupied by inmates from outside the
state, primarily Vermont and Connecticut.

"It seems ironic to me that we're talking about raising thresholds for
sending people to prison that could result in 400 to 500 more prisoners
being put on the street but we're bringing in out-of-state prisoners," said
Sen. Bill Bolling, R-Hanover.

Before legislators decide to send those prisoners back, however, lawmakers
will have to consider the loss of about $30 million the state receives from
those states for housing the prisoners, Hickman said.

Talk of prison crowding problems did not please Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr.,
R-Augusta.

"Why not reopen a prison that's already built at Staunton?" Hanger said.
"To me, it's bogus for us to talk about operating costs because we've put a
tremendous amount of money into that facility only to let it go."

The Staunton Correctional Center, formerly a mental hospital with buildings
that date to the 1840s, was ordered closed by the Legislature this year,
resulting in the loss of 378 jobs. Renovating such an old facility was
deemed prohibitively expensive.