Pubdate: Tue, 25 May 2004 Source: Decatur Daily (AL) Copyright: 2004 The Decatur Daily Contact: http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/index.shtml Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/696 STATE NEEDS SENTENCING GUIDELINES FOR FAIRNESS If legislators had used the same logic about the General Fund budget that Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, applied to volunteer sentencing guidelines, they would not have passed the spending bill. The senator explained that legislators didn't pass the Alabama Sentencing Commission's bills because members didn't approve the guidelines until about a month before the session ended. That, he said, didn't give legislators enough time to study the changes. Legislators, however, passed a $1.4 billion budget on the last night of the session last week, only hours after a conference committee reached a compromise. Basically, the sentencing guidelines called for a person convicted of a crime in one county to get about the same sentence handed out for a similar crime in another county. Some in the judiciary don't like the guidelines because they pride themselves on being hanging judges. That's good politics in some places. In addition, the guidelines would have eased the overcrowded prison problem through lighter minimum sentences for certain non-violent drug and property crimes. The Sentencing Commission has been at work for four years studying cases and sentences, so most of its findings are hardly new. The Legislature got the state into its current prison mess by hiking sentences, while not providing money to house and maintain inmates. The result is that not courts, but parole boards are emptying prisons of nonviolent offenders. Many judges would like the political cover that sentencing guidelines give, but legislators fear being labeled as retreating from their get-tough, stay-tough policy. The commission members did good work and its recommendations deserve more than the usual politics for which the Legislature is noted. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin