FAYETTEVILLE — A plan to slow the state’s prison population boom is no easy fix.
The legislation hadn’t been filed as of Monday but drafts are circulating at the Capitol and some prosecutors are already balking.
They’re worried, for example, that the proposed change would make violent offenders eligible for early parole. That’s not necessarily so, but it is effective fear-mongering about a bill that isn’t yet filed.
Gov. Mike Beebe, who is making prison reform part of his legislative agenda, is trying to allay the prosecutors’ concerns, suggesting miscommunication and misunderstanding about the draft legislation.
But he does have a hurdle to clear with them and the people who elected the prosecutors if the governor is to get this reform effort on better footing.
First, some background:
The Arkansas Working Group on Sentencing and Corrections reported in early January to Gov. Beebe what he and a lot of others already knew or suspected.
Unfettered growth of the state prison system is extremely costly and results from policy that is not necessarily effective in controlling crime.
What they suggested fits right in with the push from so many citizens and legislators these days to control government spending.
But controlling spending means change and not all change is comfortable.
Just a few of the numbers the group reported puts the problem in perspective. In the past 20 years, inmate population doubled and corrections costs rose 450 percent. What had cost $45 million annually now exceeds$349 million a year.
Those are the numbers to date. Look 10 years down the road without changes and the population in the prisons is expected to jump another 43 percent and cost another $1.1 billion - that’s billion, with a “b.”
The study is the product of Arkansas people named by the governor and others and guided by the Pew Center on the States.
While their assignment was to look at these mounting costs for corrections, they also looked for ways not only to cut costs but to do it while reducing recidivism and crime rates.
“Drivers” for the problems with the existing system, according to the report, include underuse of probation, the sentencing of nonviolent offenders to prison, imposition of longer prison terms, and delayed transfer from prison to parole.
The report didn’t put it quite this way. But what has largely gotten us in this mess is a toughon-crime attitude demanded of politicians by constituents, compounded by an everincreasing problem of drug and alcohol abuse and crime related to it. That’s what filled our prisons and caused us to build more.
The recommended changes in prison and parole policy areaimed at getting or keeping lesser criminals out of the prisons and saving the available bunks for violent and career criminals.
Importantly, the prosecutors’ perspective was represented at the table during the study.
Yet, as study results have transformed into specific legislation, members of the Arkansas Prosecuting Attorneys Association are waving red flags.
To be fair, one prosecutor said their concerns are with fewer than a dozen of the 122 sections in a 160-page bill.
But this early burst of criticism - including the suggestion that reforms will put dangerous offenders on the street - is just the sort that will color public perception of the overall proposal and make any reform all the more difficult.
Lots of people weren’t listening when the governor’s working group produced its report. Nor have they been privy to the circulating draft of the resulting legislation. Too many probably do hear that prosecutors, the people they elected to help protect them, are concerned that this bill doesn’t do that.
Gov. Beebe has said he agrees with the prosecutors on the underlying complaint.
“I want to keep the violent criminals locked up as long as we need to keep them locked up,” said Beebe.
The trick is legislating how long is long enough for what kind of offender and at what cost in dollars and in public safety.
Whatever policy change comes won’t be comfortable to everyone, but it is clear that some serious change is needed.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A COLUMNIST FOR NORTHWEST ARKANSAS MEDIA.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 02/23/2011