Review negatives before abolishing parole in S.C.

The League of Women Voters of South Carolina applauds The Post and Courier for its recent series of reports on critical shortcomings in the state's criminal justice system. You helped us understand some of the many reasons why South Carolina's violent crime rate was highest in the nation in 2006. Your follow-up editorial wisely cautioned that Attorney General Henry McMaster's proposal to abolish parole and probation in South Carolina first requires careful study of its potential costs and benefits for taxpayers.

We wanted to know more about the experience of Virginia, cited by McMaster as his role model for parole abolition, so we did a Google news search. We wanted to know what has happened in Virginia between 1995 and 2008 to support the attorney general's assertion that Virginia's crime rate has now fallen to its lowest point in 30 years.

Here is what we found.

In 1993, George Allen got elected governor after a tough-on-crime campaign to abolish parole. A high-crime rate (that began to go down in 1993) had already led to a plan to build six new prisons. Violent felons in Virginia were serving as little as one-sixth of their sentences.

The next year the Virginia General Assembly abolished parole (but not probation) for all crimes committed after Jan. 1, 1995. A huge bond issue was passed to pay for a prison-building boom, including two supermax facilities.

But in 1999 there were 4,500 empty beds in Virginia prisons. The predicted need for prison space had been greatly overestimated by the state's Department of Public Safety and Gov. Allen. Critics charged that the state was filling the super-expensive supermax prisons with inmates who didn't need to be there to avoid the embarrassment of empty beds. Even more notably, Virginia began to rent prison cells to other states.

By 2003 Virginia's sentencing guidelines were considered a model for the country. In addition to parole abolition, voluntary sentencing guidelines had been established. Non-violent crimes got sentences about equal to the actual time spent in prison before parole abolition. Violent and repeat offenders got much longer sentences. The state had built regional jails with drug treatment programs and closed many small, older jails.

It built minimum-security work centers, diversion centers and community day-reporting centers as alternative means of incarceration for less serious offenders. Crime had fallen by 25 percent over the past decade.

In 2004, the other shoe dropped. Even though crime was declining, an increasing demand for cells by Virginia's own prisoners forced an end to the rental program to other states. Because of parole abolition, Virginia felons remained incarcerated, serving an average 91 percent of their sentences. The average prison stay was up 25 percent and expected to lengthen. Probation violators, about half of whom had committed new crimes, began to be locked up in high numbers. From 1990-2004, the state had opened 13 prisons. Two more were planned for 2005, another was expanded, and the state began housing its prisoners in local jails until prison space became available.

In 2008, there has been good news and bad news. A recidivism-risk assessment has helped Virginia judges divert almost half of prison-bound felons to alternative programs, with a low recidivism rate. But this year the state government is so cash-strapped that it cut $40 million in funds for the Department of Corrections. To replace the cuts, that department planned to rent 1,000 prison beds to other states, and ship Virginia prisoners to crowded local jails. When some sheriffs threatened to sue the state, Gov. Tim Kaine stopped the rental plan.

A report in June 2008 predicted that soon the number of state prisoners will increase so much that Virginia will need to build a new prison each year for the next six years. Virginia's rate of incarceration remains in line with other states. But longer sentences, parole abolition and more violators of parole granted before 1995 will lead to greater and greater demand for space.

Last month the LWVSC spoke with a member of Attorney General McMaster's staff. We asked him if his office had commissioned an independent projection of what South Carolina's prison population would be over the 20 years following the abolition of parole and probation. He said it had not.

We were surprised at this answer, since last year the attorney general's office made a serious effort to pass a bill abolishing parole and probation in South Carolina.

The state Senate and House took up the bill but did not pass it. Now we have read in The Post and Courier that House Speaker Bobby Harrell and Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell have already decided that abolishing parole and probation would be a good idea, and Rep. Harrell promises to push the plan through in January.

We think they should do more research first, and studying the experience of Virginia would be a good start.

Last June the South Carolina General Assembly did pass a bill to create a sentencing reform commission and required it to make its recommendations to the General Assembly by June of next year.

The LWVSC urges all legislators to wait for that report and consider its recommendations before drastically changing the state's criminal justice system by precipitously ending parole and probation.

Barbara Zia, Ph.D, is president of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina. She resides in Mount Pleasant.