Early-release proposal gets mixed response

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's proposal to release roughly 1,000 inmates 90 days early runs counter to the longstanding direction of policy in the state and is raising some mixed reactions, even among Republicans.

Kaine's budget proposal, if approved by the General Assembly, would save an estimated $5 million by 2010 and would leave it up to the director of the Virginia Department of Corrections to select the nonviolent inmates for early release.

"The rate of growth in the state's budget for incarceration [now over $1 billion annually] has dramatically outpaced other spending items over the past decade," Kaine said Wednesday in detailing his plans to deal with a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall.

"At a time of economic crisis, lawmakers should rethink costly policies, like prison expansion, that divert resources from education, health care and child services," he said.

But former Virginia Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore, Kaine's Republican opponent for governor in 2005, thinks Kaine is taking a big public-safety and political risk.

"Any crime committed by [the inmates released early] can be tied around his neck," Kilgore said. "One thing you don't cut even in hard times is public-safety dollars. I think that sends the wrong message, particularly when you go into bad economic times [and] you see more crime, not less."

Likewise, J. Tucker Martin, spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, said McDonnell "does not believe this is an appropriate way to balance Virginia's budget."

"This is contrary to the current policy of the commonwealth related to abolition of parole," Martin said. Inmates should serve their full sentences and when released be provided with the resources needed to successfully re-enter society, he said.

But Richard Cullen, a former Virginia attorney general, U.S. attorney and longtime Republican activist, said, "Governor Kaine is very thoughtful, and I'm sure he's not going to do anything that's going to adversely impact public safety."

In 1994, Cullen was co-chairman of then-Gov. George Allen's commission that drew up the plans to abolish parole and reform sentencing in Virginia.

"I haven't studied it," Cullen said of Kaine's proposal, but "I don't have a strong reaction to what the governor's trying to do."

"I think we probably have too many nonviolent prisoners locked up," Cullen said.

Even though Virginia abolished parole in the mid-1990s, inmates can still earn up to a 15 percent sentence reduction from the Department of Corrections for good behavior.

Mark Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, which favors alternatives to prison when appropriate, agrees with Cullen.

"I think it's a very smart strategy, whether we're in an economic crisis or not," he said.

"Many people in prison are staying longer than is probably necessary for public safety, and the state can save some significant money," he said.

In the mid-1990s, Virginia and many other states ended parole and enacted stiffer prison terms for violent and repeat offenders, but those moves were just part of a decades-long growth in prisons across the country.

In 1971, there were 200,000 prison inmates in the U.S.; today, there are 1.6 million, with 38,000 in Virginia. Virginia spends more than $1 billion a year on prisons. Nationally, the annual cost is $60 billion, and some states are having worse problems than Virginia.

A judge has ordered California to make $8 billion in improvements to inmate health care. Beyond that, lawyers for inmates in California have asked the courts to release more than a third of the state's 150,000 inmates to relieve overcrowding.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 2000 to 2007, the imprisonment rate grew faster in Virginia than in all but five other states -- from 211 per 100,000 residents to 333 per 100,000.

But Virginia, with crime rates well below the national average, also has a long way to go to reach the current national average of 506 prisoners per 100,000 residents.

As for Kaine's proposal, an issue that could come up in the General Assembly is the definition of a "nonviolent" offender.

Under Kaine's plan, for example, the Department of Corrections could consider someone who is in prison for grand larceny -- but who has a prior conviction for a violent crime -- a nonviolent inmate.

Many lawmakers and others, however, consider offenders' entire records when classifying the individuals as violent or nonviolent.

Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey said the plan is discretionary and that corrections officials are likely to consider previous records.
Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or fgreen@timesdispatch.com.