Thread: Dems, GOP irked as gov strips budget of key prison release t

madison.com

Thur, July 9

Both Dems, GOP irked as gov strips budget of key prison release terms

Steven Elbow — 7/09/2009 1:17 pm

No one expected critics of Gov. Jim Doyle's plan to allow criminal offenders a way to get out of prison early to be happy with its inclusion in the state budget.

"Citizens of Wisconsin beware: Thousands of dangerous criminals will be out of jail early and they may soon be coming to a neighborhood near you," Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, fumed in a press release after Gov. Jim Doyle signed his "earned release" plan into law as part of the budget last week. The plan has also been criticized by Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen.

But the final version of sentencing reform that Doyle signed into law disappointed some within Doyle's own party as well.

"What the governor did was a start, but we could have accomplished so much more," says state Rep. Joe Parisi, D-Madison, chairman of the Assembly Corrections Committee.

Doyle's plan represents a sea change in the tough-on-crime philosophy that dominated debate on corrections for the past two decades. It would make all but the most violent offenders and sex offenders potentially eligible for early release, just as they were under the old system of parole, before truth-in-sentencing legislation took effect in 1999 to make offenders serve the entire duration of their sentence. Parole was renamed "extended supervision," and was also part of the mandatory sentence, to be served in full.

Doyle's earned release plan was presented last spring as a way to chip away at a burgeoning prison population, which grew by 14 percent between 2000 and 2007 and is projected to balloon by another 25 percent by 2019, costing the state $2.5 billion in prison construction and operating costs.

But Democrats wanted more. They inserted several additional sentencing reform measures into the budget, only to see most of their efforts fall victim to the Democratic governor's veto pen.

Those proposals were recommended by the Justice Center of the Council on State Governments, a nonpartisan association based in Washington, D.C. The center has had success dealing with prison overcrowding problems in other states using an approach it calls the Justice Reinvestment Initiative.

Parisi says "those recommendations are tested, they're evidence-based, they've been used in a number of other states. And definitely not soft-on-crime states. We're talking Texas. We're talking Kansas."

While the Justice Center is currently working with 10 states on sentencing reform, Texas and Kansas are often cited as success stories, both because the group was able to gain the support of both Democrats and Republicans to overcome a stringent law-and-order mind-set, and because those states saw significant drops in the numbers of offenders who landed back in prison after their release into the community.

In Texas, where the prison population was projected to grow by more than 5,000 in 2007 and 2008, new inmates instead numbered only 529, and parole revocations that landed offenders in prison dropped by 25 percent. In Kansas, the parole revocation rate decreased by 48 percent and the prison population declined by 7.5 percent since 2004, when the state enacted strategies endorsed by the Justice Center to stem its prison population. At the same time, reconviction rates by parolees under supervision dropped by 35 percent.

Last year in Wisconsin, the governor, the state Supreme Court chief justice, the Republican Assembly speaker and the Democratic Senate president commissioned an analysis from the Justice Center on the factors driving the state's prison population growth. The center made its recommendations to a legislative committee, which endorsed them.

The center found that Wisconsin prisons are increasingly populated by offenders who violate the terms of their extended supervision but commit no new crimes. The 2007 average stay for such violations was 18 months, costing the state $99 million that year, according to the analysis. The center recommended capping prison time for such rule violations at six months.

Other recommendations included limiting the time offenders spend on extended supervision to 75 percent of the time they spend behind bars, setting a goal to reduce recidivism by 25 percent by 2011, expanding community-based mental health and job placement services for offenders and giving judges the authority to hand out shorter sentences if offenders complete court-ordered treatment programs.

In the budget he signed last week, however, Doyle vetoed the 25-percent goal in recidivism reduction, the cap on extended supervision and the six-month limit on prison time for revocations. While the Legislature didn't propose allowing judges to hand out shorter sentences contingent upon successful treatment programs, it would have allowed judges to review sentences that have been reduced. Doyle vetoed that, too.

"We were surprised by the vetoes," says Tony Fabelo, director of research for the Justice Center. "But we have no comment. That's the prerogative of the governor."

One of the Justice Center's proposals that survived, points out Doyle's budget director, Dave Schmiedicke, is money for community-based treatment programs. While it falls short of the Justice Center recommendation of $30 million, the Legislature set aside $10 million, and Schmiedicke says that money should help clear up some of the bottlenecks to programs.

What the governor's vetoes did, Schmiedicke says, "were really to strengthen the provisions and improve on what the Legislature had put in."

But the governor's vetoes make it clear that he wants the Department of Corrections to have a free hand in implementing the new program.

While the final decision over who gets out early will be up to a newly created Earned Release Review Commission appointed by the governor, which will replace the Parole Board, the vetoes ensure that the Department of Corrections will have control over much of the process that will allow offenders to get out of prison early.

Schmiedicke says provisions such as judicial oversight over caps on prison stays would have tied the hands of Department of Corrections officials charged with getting eligible offenders out of prison while still keeping the streets safe.

"The department really needs to have flexibility in those issues because you really can't create a one-size-fits-all policy for every single offender," he says.

Steven Elbow — 7/09/2009 1:17 pm

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/457516

Obviously the Democratic part of our goverment doesn't care to protect the legal citizens of America.