RYAN PROPOSAL 'REPREHENSIBLE'

Gov. George Ryan has proposed freeing 4,500 prison inmates before their
sentences have run in order to balance the state budget. That is 4,500
people who were arrested by the police for either possessing or dealing
drugs, many of whom were prosecuted by my assistant state's attorneys.
Court records show that it takes an average of nine arrests before a
defendant is actually sentenced to prison. That is nine times that a police
officer has arrested a suspect and nine times that assistant state's
attorneys prosecuted the cases.

In each of these 4,500 cases, a judge has looked at the evidence, the
amount of drugs involved and the criminal record of the defendant before
deciding to send the defendant to prison. To send these legally convicted
and sentenced inmates back to their community - and I know that a high
percentage of these inmates are from Cook County - is not only
reprehensible, but also illegal.

As the chief law enforcement officer of Cook County and the president of
the Illinois State's Attorneys Association, I hope that the governor's
threat is an empty one. We have enough dealers and users on our streets
without the governor circumventing the judiciary by unleashing a small army
of drug offenders on our communities.

Richard A. Devine Cook County State's Attorney