Pubdate: Tue, 21 Feb 2006
Source: Gadsden Times, The (AL)
Copyright: 2006 The Gadsden Times
Contact:  http://www.gadsdentimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1203

THE COST OF BEING TOUGH ON CRIME

State's Stringent Habitual Offender Law Crowds Prisons

Alabama's prison overcrowding problems are bad enough that the state 
is sending some inmates to an out-of-state prison. Part of the 
problem, a report suggests, is that one-third of the state's prison 
population is not going anywhere.

That would be the state's habitual offender inmates - those who can 
get longer sentences, even life in prison without parole after their 
"third strike" crime.

A lot of state's adopted such laws in the 1980s and 1990s as "tough 
on crime" measures. The laws are popular with voters, therefore 
popular with politicians, understandably. Who's going to vote for the 
"let 'em off easy" candidate?

Alabama's habitual offender law is one of the nation's toughest. This 
state and 15 others allow life imprisonment upon conviction for one 
prior felony, according to an Alabama Sentencing Commission study 
that examined the laws from state-to-state. Someone could be 
convicted of three nonviolent crimes and get the same sentence as 
someone who convicted of three violent offenses.

When someone commits a Class A felony such as murder, kidnapping, 
first-degree rape, prior crimes are reviewed before "enhanced" 
sentencing is used. In all other offenses, the court system doesn't 
look at how serious the other crimes were.

More than half of Alabama's 8,600 habitual offenders got "enhanced" 
sentences after a conviction for a property or drug crime, according 
to the Alabama Sentencing Commission.

And Alabama can add more time to sentences than any other state. 
Judges can add an additional 15-99 years or life imprisonment for an 
habitual offender. South Carolina has the lowest range, letting judge 
add between 1-5 years to a sentence.

Keeping so many inmates in prison for such a long time leaves the 
prison system to deal with elderly inmates, something one research 
said is "costing them a fortune." Furthermore, Tomislav Kovandzic, a 
criminal justice professor at UAB who has researched three-strike 
laws, said they don't do anything to reduce crime.

Some criminals deserve to be locked up for the rest of their lives 
for the crimes they committed or to protect society from the crimes 
they would commit if free.

It seems the problem with the habitual offender law is that it 
doesn't allow much effort differentiate between those inmates and 
others when that third offense is committed.

Alabama needs a habitual offender, but, as attractive as it seems the 
state cannot afford to habitually apply the 
lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key philosophy to all third-time offenders.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman