JUDGE SAYS ALTERNATIVE SENTENCING WILL HELP SOLVE PRISON SHORTAGE

CHARLESTON (AP) - Circuit Judge Martin J. Gaughan believes he knows how to
help solve the state's growing prison bed shortage: expand an alternative
sentencing program the Legislature created last year. Gaughan raved
Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about what he called an
"enlightened" state project to spend $300,000 to open a community
corrections center serving his district, which covers Brooke, Hancock and
Ohio counties.

More than 100 nonviolent offenders - typically those with drug or multiple
drunken driving arrests - have been sentenced to stay at the center eight
hours a day to perform community service work and receive drug, alcohol and
other counseling. Inmates who can afford it are charged $10 a day.

Gaughan said the center has saved the state $200,000 by keeping inmates out
of more expensive Department of Corrections facilities. He said the three
counties have saved an additional $300,000.

Gaughan said he will push to expand this year's state contribution to the
program to $2.5 million.

Military Affairs and Public Safety Director Joe Martin told the committee
that a wider array of alternative sentencing programs could play a part in
solving the state's prison bed shortage.

A 2001 George Washington University study estimated that West Virginia will
have 2,200 more prisoners than prison beds by 2010. That includes six
planned prison construction projects scheduled to be completed by 2005.

"Building 2,200 beds is the wrong thing to do. We owe it to ourselves to
look at how much can be solved with alternative sentencing and sentencing
review," Martin said.

Sen. Mark Burnette, D-Greenbrier, told Gaughan he tried to interest the
Greenbrier County Commission and judges in opening a community corrections
center without success.

Gaughan said the key was convincing the "courthouse community" - judges,
magistrates and prosecutors - that the center could work. He said starting
with simpler home confinement programs could convince the skeptical.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Bill Wooton, D-Raleigh, said Northern Panhandle
counties used home confinement policies for years before the center was built.

"This will take a while to catch on" in other counties, Wooton said.

Wooton said he would create a subcommittee to recommend solutions to the
bed shortage.