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| Missouri seeks to analyze criminal sentences |
| By digitalburg.com - DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press |
| Published: 07/05/2011 |
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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Although its prison rolls have remained relatively stable over the past eight years, Missouri is looking for ways it can divert more offenders to enhanced probation and treatment programs that could save the state millions of dollars currently spent on locking people up. An effort to analyze and revamp Missouri's criminal sentencing practices has general support from the Supreme Court, governor and legislative leaders, who all signed off on a request for help from a nonprofit group involved with a federally funded initiative. "What we have to get away from is the thought that simply sentencing a person to a term of incarceration makes the person better — it doesn't," said Supreme Court Judge William Ray Price Jr., whose two-year turn as chief justice ended Friday. "We have to be smarter about what we're doing." Although the effort has not been widely publicized yet, state officials met last month with representatives of the Public Safety Performance Project run by The Pew Center on the States. Their hope is that the Pew Center can lead a data-based analysis of the factors behind Missouri's prison population and costs, its probation and parole programs and criminal recidivism rates, among other things. The center already has completed similar studies in other states, including neighboring Arkansas and Kentucky, which both revamped their sentencing laws this year based on the organization's recommendations. In Arkansas, where the prison population doubled over the past 20 years, the Pew Center concluded that the state wasn't using probation as much as it could, had imposed longer prison sentences for nonviolent offenses and delayed the transfer of prisoners to parole. A new Arkansas law reduces sentences for some low-level offenders while adding specialized drug treatment courts and probation and parole officers. Part of the law's $9.4 million cost will be covered by raising the monthly fee from $25 to $35 for people on parole, probation or in alternative sentencing programs. The Pew Center estimates that Arkansas could save $875 million in prison construction and operation expenses over the next decade. In Kentucky, where taxpayer spending on the corrections department rose more than 300 percent since 1989, a new law similarly will reduce prison sentences for low-risk, nonviolent offenders caught with small amounts of drugs. Instead, they will be steered to treatment and alternative sentencing programs. Missouri will be embarking on its second effort in the past decade to pare back some prison terms in favor of alternative treatments. A 2003 Missouri law reduced the maximum sentence for the lowest level of felonies — including repeated drunken driving, passing bad checks and some drug-related charges — to four years in prison instead of five. It also allowed people convicted of certain nonviolent felonies to seek release from prison after 120 days, with the remainder of their sentences served on probation, parole or some other court-approved program. The 2003 law also allowed judges to decide whether to order some drug offenders to treatment programs instead of sending them to prison. At the time, Missouri was nearing the end of a 10-year building boom during which it opened nine new prisons. The inmate count stood at about 30,200, and the Department of Corrections budget was $575 million. Read More. |
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