MORE WORK AHEAD FOR TRUTH-IN-SENTENCING

The trouble that's been building with the truth-in-sentencing law over the
past couple of years could have been avoided.

The Legislature only has itself to blame for not taking care of this issue,
for not finding some compromise, but it's the taxpayers who foot the bill
in the end. The idea of banning parole for criminals through
truth-in-sentencing may be popular with the public, but it will likely
become very expensive unless lawmakers provide new sentencing guidelines.
An Associated Press report has put the cost at $194 million over the next
eight years without those guidelines.

The 1998 law requires inmates to serve their whole sentence and not get
parole, but it can also give judges a broader sentencing range.

A drug offender who got a two-year sentence before truth-in-sentencing,
which has been in effect a little more than two years, would actually serve
six to 16 months.

Under truth-in-sentencing, that person would serve the full two years.

But it was expected that lawmakers would pass new sentencing guidelines
soon after the original law, changes that would ease the burden on the
corrections system of seeing longer sentences. That has yet to happen, and
those sentencing guidelines are needed to control costs and make sentences
uniform across the state, according to Marquette University law professor
Thomas Hammer.

Consider how the prison population has mushroomed: the average daily adult
prison population increased from 6,274 in 1990 to the current figure of 20,925.

The Assembly and the Senate have passed their own versions of the
sentencing guidelines. Both would lower maximum penalties for most crimes
and eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, and create a commission to
track and compile data on sentencing practices in Wisconsin and adopt
advisory guidelines for felonies.

There are differences: the Assembly would let older or terminally ill
inmates ask to change a sentence by being put on extended supervision
before having completed a full sentence; the Senate would allow judges to
change sentences while inmates are still in prison.

Such provisions are similar to parole, since inmates could be freed before
serving their whole sentence.

One thing's for sure: the state has to address overcrowding in the prison
system.

These changes could help with that problem, so why not work out a deal that
includes both provisions? This needs to be resolved, because more people
are going to prison and sentences seem to be getting longer.