Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., wants Congress to find ways to cut the prison population -- a sharply divisive issue that has shaped his home state's politics for more than a decade.
Backed by the White House and key Senate Republicans, Webb yesterday called for a national commission to conduct a 1½-year review of the criminal-justice system.
Webb, who has been speaking out on prison issues for the past year, said the bipartisan panel should examine crime control, sentencing, and ways to ease the return of felons to society after completing their penalties.
Webb said incarceration, in particular, is raising concerns at all levels of government because of the exploding cost of jail construction and housing inmates who may be unprepared for life outside prison.
"It's a very emotional issue," he said in a speech. "We have a mess here . . . and we have to have a holistic approach to solve it."
The U.S. has the world's highest incarceration rate, with nearly 2.4 million people behind bars. An additional 5 million are on probation or parole.
One in every 46 adult Virginians is in prison or jail or on probation or parole -- more than double the 1 in 108 in 1982.
In addition to President Barack Obama, Senate Democrats and Republicans prominent in the law-and-order debate are supporting the Webb proposal. They include Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the panel's top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
In Virginia, the prison population has been growing since 1995, when the state dropped parole for fixed sentences -- an initiative of Republican George Allen, the former governor whom Webb defeated for a Senate seat in 2006.
Allen said the public should be alarmed: "The criminal apologists, the criminal defense attorneys will cheer the spending of money on a commission which appears to have as its purpose reducing incarceration."
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com.
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