Indiana criminal justice study to aim at revision
by Lesley Stedman Weidenbener
Louisville Courier Journal on Monday, June 28, 2010INDIANAPOLIS – Faced with the prospect of building new prisons to accommodate increasing numbers of inmates, Gov. Mitch Daniels on Monday announced a plan to study and then overhaul Indiana’s criminal justice system.
The state will work with two national nonprofits that will evaluate the state’s sentencing laws, court system and prison statistics and then recommend changes that could be implemented as early as next year.
Key legislators and judicial officials endorsed the study and will serve on a steering committee to oversee it.
Daniels said it will be the “first wholesale, top-to-bottom look at our sentencing practices and incarceration practices in a generation or more.”
Indiana last evaluated its sentencing codes in 1976. Since then, the state’s adult prison population has grown from 7,500 to 29,000.
Forecasts project that – without changes – the prison population will be more than 30,000 by 2011 and 32,300 by mid-2014. That increase could require nearly $1 billion in prison construction and operating costs through 2017.
The study is meant to determine whether prison is the best option for keeping the public safe.
“In Indiana, we will not compromise public safety,” Daniels said. “Having more dangerous and repeat offending criminals in prison is the best way to protect Hoosiers.”
But Daniels said at a news conference where he was joined by lawmakers and Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard that he expects to find better ways to spend tax money on other offenders.
The Indiana Criminal Justice Institute will use $100,000 in federal grant money for the study, which will be coordinated by the Pew Center on the States and the Council of State Governments Justice Center.
The groups plan to work with Indiana officials on the effort through November 2011. But Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington and chairman of the state House Courts and Criminal Code Committee, said the goal is to have some recommendations ready for lawmakers when they return to the Statehouse in January, when the General Assembly will also begin work on the next two-year state budget.
“We thought it was important to do a lot of this in tandem with the budget,” Pierce said.
The Pew Center and Council of State Governments have worked with about a dozen other states to revamp their criminal justice systems. In Texas, the group recommended more probation options, residential treatment and more programs for drunken drivers, said Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project.
Gelb called the results “remarkable.” The crime rate is dropping and the inmate population has flat-lined in Texas, he said.
But he said that states are different and he enters the Indiana study with an open mind about problems and solutions.
Daniels said that in Indiana, many inmates spend so little time in prison there’s virtually no chance for rehabilitation. He said the study may identify better ways to serve those defendants.
The study will include a comprehensive look at the system, including evaluations of:
–Probation and parole supervision practices.
–Community corrections and transition programs and programs for nonviolent offenders.
–The use of issue-specific courts, including drug and family courts.
–Sentencing guidelines and requirements.
Larry Landis, executive director of the Indiana Public Defenders Council, said a study and overhaul of the sentencing statutes is long overdue.
“Changes have been piecemeal and reactionary to specific incidents or crimes and usually involved enhanced sentences,” he said. “This is an opportunity to both deal with the disparity of sentencing for different types of crimes and the unfortunate consequence of three decades of the war on drugs.”
The latter, Landis said, has escalated penalties for drug offenses beyond those for violent crimes.
Senate Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters Chairman Brent Steele, R-Bedford, acknowledged that lawmakers are prone to the pressure that accompanies horrific crimes and often push legislation that enhances or creates specific crimes. But Steele said lawmakers are ready to make the system more fair and sensible.
Shepard said judges, too, are ready for change.
“More than 2,000 times a day, an Indiana trial judge decides what a sentence should be for a crime,” he said. “The question on the table is, ‘What’s the smart sentence?’”
The answer, though, is not always an easy one, he said, and trial judges are looking for better ways to answer those questions.
