FUNDING BOOST MAY NOT FIX PRISON SYSTEM'S PROBLEMS

Oklahoma legislators are expected to give state Corrections Department
employees a reprieve from furloughs when Monday's special session
begins. But the funding proposal they'll consider may just be a
temporary fix to a much larger problem. Legislators are expected to
give the department $9.8 million to delay furloughs until April. Even
with that money, the agency still faces a $27 million deficit because
of state budget cuts and costs associated with a growing inmate population.

Officials are hoping something happens between now and April that will
stave off what could be a disastrous situation for the department,
compressing its planned furlough days into a three-month span.

"We can't rule that out at this point," department spokesman Jerry
Massie said. "We can't rule it in either. But we can't rule it out."

Financial crisis In September, agency Director Ron Ward announced 23
furlough days for all 4,850 corrections employees between Nov. 1 and
June 30.

The furloughs were designed to help the department cut $18.6 million
from its budget. Every state agency has had to cut more than 9 percent
of their budgets because of tax revenue shortfalls totaling $291.7
million.

The furloughs would slash the department's budget by $14.9 million,
but would cost the average corrections employee $300 a month and leave
the state's already understaffed prisons even more threadbare. The
department is operating with 18 percent of its jobs vacant, and many
of its employees were having to consider applying for food stamps and
state health care aid to get by.

The furloughs were put off a month, and Monday's special session
should delay them further. But if things don't improve by April, the
department may have to enact the furloughs anyway and cram them into
three months instead of the planned seven.

This could lead to other costs as well as hardships for the department
and its employees. Had the furloughs gone into effect as planned, the
department would have had to pay about $750,000 in unemployment
benefit costs, as many corrections employees would have qualified for
partial unemployment benefits.

But the more days per month the employees are furloughed, the greater
those unemployment costs will be. At worst, the department could be
liable for $4.6 million in unemployment compensation if its workers'
furloughs are jammed into a shorter time period, Massie said.

This also would leave fewer people to watch Oklahoma's prisoners and
create an even greater financial burden for corrections employees.

And there are other issues. The circumstances that led to the
department's financial crisis have yet to be addressed.

Underlying problems The department has a history of being underfunded.
In four of the past six years, the Legislature has had to supplement
the corrections budget by tens of millions of dollars. Oklahoma spent
$250.5 million on corrections in 1997, a figure that grew to $403.6
million in 2002. The department is seeking $446.5 million next year.

Several factors have led to the department's expanding costs. The
state's inmate count has grown to 22,904, up nearly 8,500 in the past
decade. The inmate population grew so fast that the state couldn't
build prison space fast enough to house them all. So prison
corporations did. Oklahoma has 5,724 inmates housed in six private
prisons, department records show.

Even with the private prison building boom, Oklahoma's prisons are
more than 97 percent full.

Part of the problem is that Oklahoma has few mechanisms to help
control its prison population. Many of the controls it once had were
scrapped after a 1996 killing spree that left four people dead.

Oklahoma had a law which forced the governor to release low-risk,
nonviolent offenders if the state's inmate population reached a
certain percentage of the prison system's capacity.

One of those releases was Lamonte Fields, a 20-year-old convicted drug
dealer. He was released 14 months into a 15-year sentence and killed
his ex-girlfriend and two other people before he was shot to death by
police.

The killings caused a corrections director to resign and led to the
discontinuation of the early release program. Lawmakers passed
truth-in-sentencing laws that forced certain offenders to serve at
least 85 percent of their sentences.

These get-tough measures helped keep Oklahoma's prison population on
the rise even though crime rates fell throughout the 1990s.

Violent and nonviolent offenders alike are serving longer sentences
behind bars, and a federal study released in May showed that nearly
half of the state's incoming prisoners in 2001 were drug and drunken-
driving offenders.

The parole system was able to level off population growth, but after a
short lull, inmate counts are swelling again.

"Thousands of them (inmates) are petty drug and nonviolent offenders
who we can't afford to house at $18,000 a year anymore," state Sen.
Cal Hobson said.

Possible solutions Several ideas are being discussed to ease the
department's financial problems and pare its prison population.

Some of them are:

A special commutation and parole docket. The Pardon and Parole Board
could expand its criteria for parole eligibility, thus expanding the
pool of inmates who could be released from prison. Gov. Frank Keating
also has said he has files on 3,000 inmates who could be eligible for
parole or early release.

Reviving the early release program. Inmates sentenced to death and
life without parole or who fall under truth-in-sentencing guidelines,
about 5,000 of the state's most serious criminals, would not be
eligible for early release. But nonviolent offenders could be put
under house arrest, electronic monitoring or have their sentences
otherwise reduced. This would take legislative approval.

"It's been used in other states, and was at one time used in this
state, and it could work here again," said Hobson, D- Lexington.

Expanding alternative sentencing programs that already exist. Many
counties have community sentencing, drug courts and other forms of
dealing with lesser offenders.

Massie said these ideas could help the department control costs. But
there are risks.

Legislators may be reluctant to revisit the early release issue,
mostly because of the shadow cast by Fields.

"That's the risk you take in politics," Hobson said.

Prosecutors and judges also will have to lend some cooperation to help
the department, Massie said. They're the ones who ultimately decide
how inmates are prosecuted and sentenced.

"I hope they'll be partners on this subject," Hobson said. "They've
got to realize that the corrections budget has exploded to more than
$400 million now."