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| Sentencing bills fail |
| By timesdaily.com - M.J. Ellington |
| Published: 06/28/2011 |
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When Alabama legislators backed away from sentencing reform bills late in the 2011 session, they turned down bills that reformers said would make state punishment better fit the crime. They also left a $30 million hole in the general fund budget that lawmakers scrambled at the last minute to fill in order to avoid a special session. They did so by cutting almost all non-education agency budgets by 1.5 percent, zeroing out funding to museums, cutting state parks and increasing employee retirement contributions. Lawmakers also left unanswered questions about the best way to handle a prison population that hovers near 200 percent capacity as new laws are introduced every year that would lock up more offenders. In conservative, lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key Alabama, where the Department of Corrections' budget continues to gobble up ever growing chunks of limited state budget revenue, leaders look for answers. The threat of federal court intervention because of overcrowding is always a possibility. Of the seven sentencing reform bills proposed by a nonpartisan coalition, only one passed. The technical violator bill by Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, would lengthen probation the first time a parolee commits a minor violation such as being late for a drug test. Previously, an offender went back to prison. Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh was sponsor of a key bill in the package and said the measure called for release of 3,000 inmates from state prisons to less restrictive programs in five years. “I really believe people got spooked on these reforms when they saw headlines saying 3,000 people could be let out of prison, and they couldn't get past that,” said Marsh, R-Anniston. Marsh's bill would have established a Class D felony with different punishment levels for offenders who commit some nonviolent crimes, including property and service crimes and receiving stolen goods. Read More. |
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