By Mike Cason 
Montgomery Advertiser

A long-awaited report from the Alabama Sentencing Commission can help fix a criminal justice system staggered by a 600 percent growth in the prison population in 30 years, Attorney General Bill Pryor said Thursday.

The Legislature created the commission three years ago to help solve prison and jail crowding and to suggest better ways to respond to violent and nonviolent crime. Its 65-page report was completed this week.

Pryor said the commission's findings can help build a system that's truthful, fair and rational.

It will be more truthful because criminals will serve their full sentences, fair because those with similar crimes will receive similar punishment and rational because violent offenders will be locked up while more nonviolent offenders will enter alternative programs, Pryor said.

"This will reduce our incarceration rate while ensuring that the most dan gerous people will be incarcerated for longer periods of time," said Pryor, who initiated the legislation creating the commission in 2000.

Pryor said the reforms won't work without a significant increase in funding for the system.

"These recommendations are important, but funding is the bottom line," Pryor said. "Systemic changes and much more funding for corrections are needed to accomplish these goals. One without the other, this will fail." 

Alabama's prisons have an all-time high population of more than 28,000. The state is under federal court orders to improve its women's prison and state court orders to remove inmates from county jails.

The 15-member commission included prosecutors, a defense attorney, judges, state lawmakers, a victims' advocate and prison and parole board officials.

The commission pooled records from the prison system, court system, parole board and Criminal Justice Information System to build a database of 64,000 felons that shows sentencing patterns. The database will help forecast the impact of proposed changes in sentencing laws on state needs for prison space and other resources, Commission Chairman Joseph Colquitt wrote in the report.

The report recommends short-term and long-term changes to sentencing laws phased in over four years. The second phase would abolish parole. Inmates would serve a minimum sentence with time added if they weren't cooperative prisoners. All inmates would receive supervision upon release from prison.

The report proposes several changes for the Alabama Legislature to approve this year.

Those would change the state's theft statutes, change the law authorizing community corrections programs, add money for probation and parole officers and add money for substance-abuse programs.

The report states that one-third of those sent to prison in Alabama were convicted of drug possession, drug sales or felony DUI.

"We need to develop an effective community punishment system that can hold those offenders more accountable for their offenses than (we have) today," said Chief Assistant Attorney General Rosa Davis, a commission member. "Today we're sending them to prison where they sit on a bunk all day, maybe go to substance abuse for a quarter of the day, and there's nothing else for them to do the rest of the day. If they live in the community, they can go to substance abuse and work the rest of the day and they can pay part of their cost of supervision and help support their families."

For theft crimes, the report recommends raising the value of stolen property that triggers a felony conviction from $250 to $500. It also recommends removing some disparities in the theft laws.

Davis said the changes in theft laws would free 3,000 prison beds over five years.

The Sentencing Commission is a state agency and will remain in place to monitor changes to sentencing laws.

"This is the first set of major reforms," Pryor said.

"I think it lays out a plan the state can live by and gives us the tools and mechanisms to help us get out of the crisis that we're in with a rational plan and to keep us from getting into another crisis," Davis said.

SENTENCING REPORT

The Alabama Sentencing Commission, created by the Legislature in 2000, released a report March 10 titled "A Rational Approach to Sentence Reform." Here are some of the goals of the commission:

• Establish an effective, fair and efficient sentencing system that promotes truth-in-sentencing.
• Provide a wider array of sentencing options for nonviolent offenders.
• Authorize individualized sentencing as warranted by mitigating and aggravating factors, maintaining judicial discretion in sentencing -- both in time imposed and the use of sentencing options.
• Avoid unwarranted sentencing disparities among felony offenders with similar records and disparities based on race, gender, wealth and jurisdiction.
• Prevent prison overcrowding while avoiding the premature release of prisoners.

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