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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Ind. Gov't. - "Daniels: I'll veto amended prison bill Changes pushed by prosecutors make cost too high, governor says"

The ILB has had a long list of entries on SB 561, the Governor's sentencing reform bill, which passed the Senate, albeit with major amendment, and is awaiting House consideration.

This morning the Indianapolis Star has this long, front-page story, written by Heather Gillers. The story should be read in full. Here are some quotes:

The original proposal -- endorsed by Daniels and drafted by a commission of the state's top justice officials -- sought to lessen prison time for nonviolent drug offenders and bring Indiana's harsh sentencing laws into line with those of other states.

But after county prosecutors assailed it as soft on crime, senators gutted the bill and even lengthened sentences for some offenders.

"It's a shame, honestly, that what looked to be a consensus is unraveled because of one interest group, the prosecutors, and they do not speak for all prosecutors," Daniels said Tuesday. "The main point here was to incarcerate people in a smarter way and to save Indiana's taxpayers a lot of money.

"So I'm not going to sign something that heads in the opposite direction and costs taxpayers money beyond what would already be the case."

The sentencing reform measure, Senate Bill 561, started the session with plenty of momentum and influential support.

The commission worked all summer to draft it, drawing on a year of research by two national bipartisan think tanks. Daniels endorsed it in his State of the State speech as a way to save a billion dollars. Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard talked it up in his State of the Judiciary.

But that original pitch for what the governor dubbed "smarter incarceration" bears little resemblance to the get-tough bill passed out of the Senate late last month.

Professor Joel Schumm, of the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, called the transformation a triumph of politics over policy. * * *

The DOC's prison construction projections based on the amended bill are disputed by the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, which pushed the changes to the proposal.

"I think (the revised bill) is a tremendous cost savings," said Steve Johnson, the council's executive director.

DOC officials acknowledged that reforms left in from the original bill would reduce Indiana's minimum- and medium-security inmate population by about 8,000 by 2045.

But, DOC Deputy Commissioner Randy Koester said, a provision tacked on at the urging of prosecutors would add about 15,227 prisoners to Indiana's maximum-security population by that date, requiring new prisons to be built. * * *

The extended sentences were the brainchild of small group of vocal prosecutors and the Prosecuting Attorneys Council, a professional group created by the state legislature that counts all county prosecutors as members. They convinced a Senate committee that adding prison time for the worst felons is a long-overdue change that must be part of any prison-reform package.

Senators then inserted into the bill a provision that serious violent felons must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences and could not earn a day off for each day of good behavior.

The Council of State Governments think tank said sentences for Indiana's worst criminals are already longer than in other states. Murderers serve more than 16 years on average here, compared with 14 in Michigan and 13 in Texas.

Other changes pushed by prosecutors stripped away reforms that would have lessened some extreme penalties that helped drive up Indiana's prison population 38 percent from 2000 to 2008 without any corresponding increase in crime.

The original bill reduced sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, but senators restored some of them. They also killed a provision shrinking the radius of designated "drug-free zones" from 1,000 to 200 feet.

"I thought the original version (of the bill) made a lot of sense," Schumm said. "I think the prosecutors' involvement shows that they have a lot of political clout. No legislators want to be seen as soft on crime."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 23, 2011 08:19 AM
Posted to Indiana Government