Justice Department figures released Tuesday show the overall state and federal prison population stands at a record 1.6 million and is still rising, but the rate of growth is slowing as state authorities look for cheaper ways to mete out justice.

If you add in those people in jails – where some are held while they await trial – the total number of people behind bars comes to 2.3 million.

The government figures show one out of every 133 U.S. residents was in prison or jail at the end of last year.

The statistics are the latest evidence that the rapid growth of prisons seen in the 1990s has cooled significantly in this decade.

The prison population grew less than 1 per cent last year. The previous decade saw the inmate population grow by an annual average of more than 6 per cent.

Ram Cnaan, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, said the slowing trend shows politicians are confronting a painful truth about prisons.

“They simply cost too much,” said Cnaan. “If you can prevent opening a new prison, you can save lots of money.”

Both liberals and conservatives are increasingly searching for alternative sentencing programs, like treatment or monitoring, he said.

“It’s not ideological, it’s pragmatic,” said Cnaan. “This is the first time that we have alliances on the right and left on this issue, and it’s the money that has forced the issue.”

The states with the largest increases in prison population were Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona, whose one-year increases were all greater than the federal prison system, which grew by 1,662 inmates.

Of the three states that lost the most prisoners in 2008, New York shed 2,273, Georgia 1,537 and Michigan 1,495.

One group that saw a big jump in incarceration were immigration detainees, which jumped 12 per cent. About 34,000 people were held last year in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement lockup or a contracted holding facility. About a third of those detainees were originally from Mexico, the Justice Department said.

While more prisoners were locked up, officials also released more – some 735,454 prisoners, a 2 per cent increase over 2007.

Among those releases, the number of those freed without conditions increased 8 per cent.

source: http://www.cjad.com/node/1035376

One out of every 133 US residents is now in prison.

The biggest jump in incarceration figures was put down to immigration detainees, a third of whom originated from Mexico.

The population of prisoners has continued to edge up in all but 20 states, causing authorities to look for better and cheaper ways to deliver justice.

Politicians have realised prisons cost too much to maintain and are saving money with alternative sentencing programs, such as treatment or monitoring.

Officials released more prisoners during the year; some 735,454 prisoners.

Eight percent of those were pushed out without conditions.

source: http://story.floridastatesman.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/c08dd24cec417021/id/575060/cs/1/

Romell Broom is still recovering from Tuesday’s prolonged execution attempt and is physically and emotionally traumatized, his attorney, Adele Shank, said Wednesday.

“It went so badly when he was walking in without injured veins, to go forward so soon afterward just seems to be inviting disaster,” Shank said.

Gov. Ted Strickland’s decision to stop Tuesday’s execution and grant a one-week reprieve appeared to be unprecedented since capital punishment was declared constitutional and the nation resumed executions in the 1970s.

Inmates in several states have experienced delays with the injection of lethal chemicals, but those executions have always proceeded the same day.

Shank said one option was to ask Strickland to consider a request for clemency and to commute Broom’s sentence.

Strickland said he is reviewing the incident and consulting with prison officials and others about the next step.

“That does not mean there will be a review of the larger issue of lethal injections,” Strickland said Wednesday. “That’s been settled. Obviously yesterday demonstrated that we have a problem with this particular set of circumstances.”

A prison log released Wednesday blamed Broom’s past drug use for problems finding a usable vein.

The log indicates that executioners made the observation at 3:11 p.m., more than an hour after first trying to find a vein.

“Medical team having problem maintaining an open vein due to past drug use,” said the log reviewed by The Associated Press.

Broom said at one point he was a heavy heroin user, but then said at another time that he wasn’t, prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn said Wednesday.

Shank said she was unaware of any such drug use.

“If there’s such a thing, it’s got to be at least 25 years old,” she said. “I don’t thinking it should be having an impact at this late date.”

Broom, 53, has been placed in a cell in the infirmary at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville where he is on close watch similar to the constant observation of death row inmates in the three days before an execution.

“It was the right place to keep him,” Walburn said. “The less we can transport an offender, the better.”

Death row inmates are housed in a Youngstown prison and executed in the death chamber at Lucasville. There’s no precedent for housing an inmate whose execution didn’t work.

The night before his scheduled execution, Broom told his brother over the phone that he was ready to die.

“He is tired of being in prison and having people tell him what to do everyday,” according to the prison log.

Broom was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton after abducting her in Cleveland in September 1984 as she walked home from a Friday night football game with two friends.

Richard Dieter, director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said he knows of only one inmate who was subjected to more than one execution.

A first attempt to execute Willie Francis in 1946 by electrocution in Louisiana did not work. He was returned to death row for nearly a year while the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether a second electrocution would be unconstitutional.

In 2007, the Georgia execution of inmate John Hightower was delayed for several minutes while officials struggled to find a suitable vein in his left arm.

Florida halted executions after the death of Angel Diaz in December 2006 was delayed for 34 minutes because needles were accidentally pushed through his veins, causing the chemicals to go into his muscles instead. Florida resumed executions in 2008 under new procedures.

In Texas in 2000, the execution of Claude Jones was delayed by about 30 minutes because of difficulties finding a vein in either arm to insert the drugs. Authorities used a vein in his left leg instead.

Problems accessing veins also delayed Ohio executions in 2006 and 2007.

In 2006, the execution of Joseph Clark was delayed for more than an hour after the team failed to properly attach an IV, an incident that led to changes in Ohio’s execution process.

The state also had difficulty finding the veins of inmate Christopher Newton, whose May 2007 execution was delayed nearly two hours.

Since Clark, the state’s execution rules have allowed team members to take as much time as they need to find the best vein for the IVs that carry the three lethal chemicals.

Ohio has executed 32 men since Wilford Berry in 1999, an execution slightly delayed also because of problems finding a vein.

source: http://www.wistv.com/global/story.asp?s=11146582

source: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/dncrime/59803147.html?cmpid=15585797

Cade William Stevens, 25, of 257 Lucky Lane, Dawson, was found at 10:06 a.m. Saturday hanging by bedsheets from cell bars at the Fayette County Prison. He was pronounced dead within the hour at Uniontown Hospital.

State police said Stevens apparently hanged himself between 9:40 a.m. and 10:06 a.m.

Two unidentified corrections officers were suspended yesterday with pay pending completion of an investigation, said Warden Larry Medlock.

The Fayette County Prison Board yesterday indicated it might take additional disciplinary action when it meets later this month. They can’t act until after Medlock and a human resources representative meet with the two guards. The meetings are required as per terms of the county’s contract with the guards’ union, United Mine Workers Local 9113.

Stevens’ mother, Shannon Ferencz, his sister, K. Leigh Krilosky, and his father, William Stevens, were among family members who attended the prison board meeting. District Attorney Nancy Vernon told them that videotapes of Stevens’ cell — and of an area where guards monitored live video feeds of the cell — have been preserved as part of the ongoing investigation.

Stevens was in jail on charges he struck a golfer in the face with an unloaded shotgun and robbed the man of $80 cash Sept. 10 at the Linden Hall Golf Course in Lower Tyrone. Police said Stevens told them he needed money to buy marijuana.

His mother and sister, both of Nashville, Tenn., yesterday said the incident occurred just five weeks after Stevens had reached out to them for help with drug withdrawal.

“He started withdrawal on his own, out on the street,” Krilosky said. “He sent my mom a text message, asking for help, and Mom had Grandma go get him.”

Ferencz and Krilosky credit Stevens’ grandparents, Gloria and Luke Knapp of Dawson, with nursing Stevens through withdrawal. Krilosky said her brother was “skin and bones” when Gloria Knapp took him in on her 140-acre farm, but had gained weight while in her care and was looking forward to going back to school.

Just prior to his arrest last week, Stevens landed a job with a paving company and planned to use his earnings to pay off tuition debts at a technical school so he could re-enroll and pursue his passion for mechanics. Ferencz said her son had a natural ability for fixing engines.

“When something didn’t run, he would take it apart in the garage, and it would be laying there, in pieces,” Ferencz said. “He would put it back together, and it would run. We always admired him for that.”

Those skills were never fully developed because Stevens turned to drugs in his late teens to cope with an earlier childhood disappointment his mother and sister declined to discuss. His troubles with the law — including an 18- to 36-month state prison sentence he drew in 2005 for arson and burglary convictions — were the result of his addiction, said his mother and sister.

“He knew what he was doing was wrong,” Ferencz said. “He said, ‘I want to do what’s right, but I can’t help myself because of the drug.’”

Krilosky said her brother quit heroin while in prison and remained drug-free for several months while on parole. He fell back into it when classmates at a college he was attending reintroduced him to heroin.

He quit again during his recent five-week stay with his grandparents, Ferencz said, but began using shortly after he started the paving job. In addition to battling his drug addiction, Ferencz said, her son was suffering from a painful medical condition that had gone untreated because he was turned down for medical assistance.

Ferencz and Krilosky said they spoke with Stevens by phone just before troopers arrested him last week for the golf-course robbery. They said Stevens feared another stint in jail.

“He was scared to death because of the threat of going back to jail, and also because of what he had done,” Ferencz said. “He wanted it to end. He wanted it to stop hurting, but he felt so helpless because he couldn’t get health care, he couldn’t get a job as a mechanic.”

Ferencz said she and her daughter take comfort in the belief that Stevens, in death, has finally found peace.

“As hurt as we are, it’s a wonderful feeling to know that Cade is with God,” Ferencz said. “We find comfort in knowing that he’s not in pain anymore.”

source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/regional/fayette/s_643569.html?source=rss&feed=7

Justice Department inspector general Glenn Fine found that claims made against Bureau of Prisons staff members increased dramatically from 2001 to 2008. Claims of sexual misconduct more than doubled, rising 130 percent in the same period.

According to the findings, female prison workers had a disproportionately higher percentage of accusations against them, yet those women who were convicted were less likely to serve time behind bars.

The inspector general is recommending that the bureau update its training and consider alternatives to automatically transferring or isolating prisoners who make such allegations. The report also recommends that the U.S. Marshals Service create new policies for preventing and reporting sexual abuse of prisoners in its custody.

About half of the claims of prison staff sex abuse were made against guards, while nearly 9 percent were made against food service workers in the prisons.

In the 2001 budget year, there were 76 allegations of criminal sex abuse, while in 2008 there were 155. Over that same time period, prison staff increased only 5 percent, and inmate population 27 percent, so the growth of the prison system does not account for the surge of sex allegations.

Bureau of Prisons officials told investigators the increase is due to a greater emphasis on encouraging people to report such abuse.

The Bureau of Prisons holds about 171,000 inmates at 93 different prison sites around the country.

A 2007 government study of all the nation’s prisons, including state-run facilities, found that more than 60,000 inmates are sexually abused every year. The study found that 4.5 percent of those surveyed reported being sexually abused in the previous 12 months.

The study also said that more prisoners reported abuse by staff than by other prisoners: 2.9 percent to about 2 percent, respectively.

source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/10/national/main5301052.shtml

Thomas James Fredenburg died Sept. 10, 2007, at Tampa General Hospital following a two-week stay at the Land O’ Lakes Jail. He was 28. An autopsy found that Fredenburg died of blunt trauma to the head.

Fredenburg was booked into the jail on an aggravated battery charge Aug. 24, 2007. According to the 23-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Tampa, he told jail medical staff that he had a drug problem and had been taking Soma, Valium and oxycodone. The next day, he reported experiencing opiate withdrawal.

Fredenburg’s condition continued to deteriorate over the next few weeks. He began hallucinating, yelling and kicking at his cell door. Deputies placed him in a padded cell when he should have been transferred to a medical facility, the complaint states.

By the beginning of September, Fredenburg was seen pacing nude in his cell and also began throwing himself into walls and rolling on the floor.

On Sept, 8, 2007, a deputy saw Fredenburg run head first into a wall and fall over a toilet, the complaint states. The behavior continued until deputies placed him in a restraint chair used for violent inmates. Later that day, he was returned to a padded cell, where he became unresponsive.

Fredenburg was transported to Bayonet Point Hospital and then to Tampa General, where he died.

The complaint alleges that jail workers showed a deliberate disregard for Fredenburg by failing to transport him to a medical facility in a timely manner.

Tampa attorney Fred Carrington filed the complaint on behalf of Fredenburg’s mother and three women who had children with Fredenburg.

Carrington couldn’t be reached for comment today.

The complaint names 17 defendants, including Sheriff Bob White, the Pasco county commission and numerous corrections officers and jail medical staff.

Andrew DeBevoise, an attorney for the sheriff’s office, declined to comment, saying he hadn’t seen the lawsuit

source: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/sep/10/pasco-sheriffs-office-sued-over-jail-inmates-death/news-breaking/

Sgt. Ronnie Brown, 48, underwent surgery for broken vertebrae Monday, eight days after the fight at the South County Jail, and he died Tuesday morning at Winter Haven Hospital, Sheriff Grady Judd said.

Brown is the first Polk detention officer to die in the line of duty, sheriff’s officials said.

Brown was injured in a confrontation Aug. 30 with inmate Terrence Barnett, 28, who had broken the sprinkler system inside his cell, Judd said.

When Brown and other deputies went into the cell, Barnett struggled with them, shoving Brown against a concrete wall at the South County Jail, and Brown fell onto the concrete floor, Judd said.

Detectives are conducting a homicide investigation into the death, the sheriff said.

While charges in the incident have been filed against Barnett, the 6-foot-10-inch, 225-pound inmate, no charges have been filed yet related to Brown’s death, Judd said.

Barnett was being transferred to a jail in another county Tuesday evening, officials said.

He was being held at the Polk jail following his arrest on a murder charge stemming from the 2007 Highlands County slaying of Bryan “Red” Fanning.

Barnett also faces numerous other charges, including battering another inmate. His violent behavior at the jail resulted in his removal to an isolation area, the Sheriff’s Office said.

“He was known to be bad,” Judd said. “They didn’t just charge into the cell looking for a fistfight … They tried to talk to him. They tried to move him out. But he wasn’t having any of that.”

Barnett was in isolation Aug. 30 when he became agitated and demanded to be transferred to the Central County Jail in Bartow, an arrest report said. He threatened to break the sprinkler head in his room if he was not moved, and deputies told him he would be placed on suicide watch.

The news angered Barnett, who claimed to have taken six muscle relaxer pills. He broke the sprinkler head and refused to leave the cell. When Brown and Sgt. Bobby Russell went inside to remove him, Barnett shoved Brown, causing him to hit the concrete wall and to fall onto his back, the report said.

The officers pulled Brown out of the cell and relocked the door. Barnett threatened the deputies with jagged pieces of his plastic storage bin when Lt. Gary Casini arrived with a device that fires balls containing pepper powder. Instead of opening the cell door, Casini opened the flap through which food trays can be inserted and began firing pepper balls into the cell. Barnett grabbed the gun and tried to pull it out of Casini’s hands. When deputy James Pitts attempted to break Barnett’s hold, he was scratched with a piece of plastic, the report said.

Finally, the pepper balls took effect and Barnett surrendered. Complaining of shortness of breath, he was handcuffed and shackled and was taken to Lake Wales Hospital. Judd declined to say whether Barnett had ingested the pills, citing the ongoing investigation.

Early the next morning, Brown was taken by ambulance to Lake Wales Hospital to be treated for his injured back. He was later released,.

The following afternoon, Sept. 1, Brown found himself in intense pain and could barely move, Judd said. That time, he was taken to Winter Haven Hospital, where his back fracture was discovered. The following day, Brown underwent back surgery.

On Tuesday morning, Brown’s wife, Tina, arrived for a visit, and found him dead in his hospital room, sheriff’s officials said.

Brown is the first Sheriff’s Office employee to be killed in the line of duty since Deputy Matt Williams was shot and killed in 2006 by Angilo Freeland, who was later killed by officers. Brown was hired as a detention deputy in October 1989 and was promoted to sergeant in April 1997. He supervised at the South County Jail in Frostproof. In 2007, he and two other detention deputies were awarded meritorious service medals from the Sheriff’s Office for saving an inmate’s life with CPR.

“It’s a hard, tough job, and sometimes a thankless job … Ronnie Brown was one of those special people,” said Capt. Jim Hogan, who supervised Brown. “He was my friend. He was a family man. He was a funny guy. As much pain as he was in, he still found a way to make us laugh.”

Brown met his wife at the Sheriff’s Office. She was also a detention deputy, assigned to the inmate booking area in Bartow. They have a 16-year-old daughter, Hogan said. “There’s a lot of members who are hurting right now,” Hogan said.

source: http://www.theledger.com/article/20090908/news/909089961

But for James Weeden, a warden at the Adult Correctional Institutions, the stakes are higher. Parents dread tantrums. He worries about riots.

Weeden and his staff pick the programming for an unusual audience, the 400 or more inmates in the ACI’s maximum security unit. They have particular characteristics and tastes that have to be considered.

If someone’s in maximum, the fortified gray stone building bristling with razor wire on Pontiac Avenue, odds are he has drawn a long sentence for a serious crime or has been transferred from another state for discipline or behavioral problems. It’s a group that can have difficulty with authority, he said, and intense rivalries along racial or other lines.

Often the most-acclaimed movies provoke a strong emotional response, he said, and strong emotional responses are exactly what the ACI staff does NOT want.

So, some genres are an obvious thumbs-down, Weeden said. Graphic violence, violence toward women and cruelty are out. Movies like Gangs of New York, Martin Scorsese’s violent take on criminal gangs in 1860s New York, is off the list, as are particularly gruesome films like the Friday the 13th series.

Ironically, the inmates usually lose out on seeing films or shows shot on the prison grounds, like the Showtime mob series Brotherhood, or James Woods’ 1996 movie Killer: A Journal of Murder.

But that doesn’t mean it’s all musicals and art films at the ACI. Last week’s offerings at maximum (rented via Netflix) included a documentary on former heavyweight boxing champion Michael Tyson and Revolutionary Road, a look at the emptiness of 1950s suburban life that won Kate Winslet a 2008 Golden Globe.

Also offered was King of California, a 2007 Michael Douglas comedy about a released mental patient who thinks Spanish treasure is buried under the local Costco, and Anaconda 4: Trail of Blood, a monster movie about two giant snakes that was filmed in Romania.

Movies are seen on televisions, either ones in gathering rooms or on individual sets some prisoners are allowed to have in their cells. Viewers are provided with headphones. The sets are not wired for cable but instead receive an over-the-air signal that covers the ACI grounds. Broadcasts are on a single channel during lockdowns or on weekends.

Weeden acknowledged that some outside the corrections facility might wonder: Why offer movies? Prison is there to punish, he said, but eventually the inmates are released and how they were treated inside affects how they act on the outside.

“If your nephew is in jail, you want the place to be safe and humane and protective of him,” Weeden said. “But if you’ve been a victim of a crime, you want to leave them in their cells. Let them hit each other.”

Douglas Dretke, director of the Correctional Management Institute of Texas at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and a former prison guard and administrator, said society has a long-term interest in punishment being stern but not vindictive.

“You want to make prison a hopeful place,” Dretke said. “We recognize in corrections that our challenge is to see that a prisoner leaving prison doesn’t leave angrier than when he came in because of the way we treated him.”

“Picture their view of their world,” Weeden said. “You’re sitting in a 6-by-9-foot cell. You can’t peek your head out. All they know is what walks past the door.”

In such a small world, small things become important. Like Tom Hanks losing his stained and deflated volleyball in the 2000 marooned-on-an-island movie Cast Away, Weeden said he has seen inmates become distraught when something as simple as a pen they have had breaks.

Dretke said correctional officers have to be careful when searching inmates’ cells.

“Small things become hugely important” to them, he said. “When a lot of conflict can occur is when an officer is doing a cell search. The property may have very little value, but if it’s treated as such, it can cause a huge amount of tension.”

“It’s hard to understand the loss of freedom that incarceration means,” Dretke said, like being able to choose what to watch. “The loss of those little things, [that’s] how incredibly tough being incarcerated can be.”

source: http://www.projo.com/news/content/ACI_MOVIES_09-08-09_4DF7UU9_v55.3b3d9d5.html

Mandatory sentencing laws are relaxed, parole is accelerated, and time off for good behavior is increased as states scramble to save money.

Reporting from Denver – After decades of pursuing lock-’em-up policies, states are scrambling to reduce their prison populations in the face of tight budgets, making fundamental changes to their criminal justice systems as they try to save money.

Some states are revising mandatory-sentencing laws that locked up nonviolent offenders; others are recalculating the way prison time is counted.

California, with the nation’s second-largest prison system, is considering perhaps the most dramatic proposal — releasing 40,000 inmates to save money and comply with a court ruling that found the state’s prisons overcrowded.

Colorado will accelerate parole for nearly one-sixth of its prison population. Kentucky has already granted early release to more than 3,000 inmates. Oregon has temporarily nullified a voter initiative calling for stiffer sentences for some crimes, and has increased by 10% the time inmates get off their sentences for good behavior.

The flurry of activity has led to an unusual phenomenon — bureaucrats and politicians expressing relief at the tight times. “The budget has actually helped us,” said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Corrections Department in Michigan, which increased its parole board by 50% this year to speed up releases.

“When you’re not having budget troubles, that’s when we implemented many of these lengthy drug sentences and zero-tolerance policies [that] really didn’t work,” he said.

Though prison budgets grew steadily over the last 20 years, a recent survey found that 26 states cut their corrections budgets this year. The reductions range from the small-scale — such as putting in energy-efficient lightbulbs — to sweeping changes like the early releases.

“States are saying, ‘We can’t build our way to public safety, especially when budgets are tight,’ ” said Adam Gelb, head of the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project. “For the most part, state leaders are not holding their noses and making these changes just to balance their budgets. They’re beginning to realize that research-based strategies can lead to less crime at far less cost than prison.”

Many states have expanded credit for good behavior. Others have made legal tweaks, such as raising the minimum amount of damage required for a property crime to be a felony. Some, like New York, have overhauled long-criticized mandatory sentencing laws that sent nonviolent, first-time drug offenders to state prison.

These efforts, however, have already run into resistance.

In Ohio, a bill to quintuple the time inmates can earn for good behavior stalled in the state Senate over objections from prosecutors and some Republicans. The bill’s sponsor, GOP state Sen. Bill Seitz, said that even Democrats in the state House were wary of helping out.

“They conjure up images of possible Willie Horton ad campaigns,” said Seitz, referring to the notorious ad that accused 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis of letting a rapist out of prison prematurely.

Still, Seitz has vowed to try to get his bill passed this fall. He says that a raft of mandatory-sentencing laws left state prisons dangerously overcrowded. “We are putting 10 pounds in a 5-pound bag.”

Corrections has become the second-fastest-growing item in state budgets, second only to Medicaid. And, unlike Medicaid and many other programs, states pay for prisons with almost no help from Washington.

In Colorado, 9% of the state budget goes to corrections. More taxpayer dollars go to house its 23,000 prisoners than to educate the 220,000 students at Colorado’s public universities, noted Evan Dreyer, a spokesman for Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter Jr.

The state has gone through severe cuts already this year — it lopped 10.5% off of its budget in June. Ritter later cut an additional $320 million and counted on saving $44 million over two years by letting 2,600 ex-cons end their probation early and having the parole board consider earlier parole for 3,500 inmates.

A nonpartisan commission recommended the moves in December, and Dreyer noted that inmates eligible for faster parole were already nearing release. “These are people who are getting out of prison anyway within six months,” he said.

The parole board has started considering whom to let out, but Republicans have attacked the plan as too risky. “It’s inevitable these people will commit crimes,” said state Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, who hopes to challenge Ritter in next year’s governor’s race.

In Oregon, legislators closed a $78-million shortfall in the public safety budget this summer by delaying the implementation of a measure that increases sentences for certain drug and property crimes.

They also raised the credit that inmates get for good behavior from 20% of their sentence to 30%, starting next year.

“We needed to save some money, at least in the short term,” said state Rep. Jeff Barker, a former police lieutenant. “It wasn’t easy.” Indeed, anti-crime activists are preparing a ballot measure to reverse the changes.

In Kentucky, the budget has been pressed for some time, but it was a finding that the state had the fastest-growing prison population in the country that spurred Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear and the Legislature to act.

The state recalculated the time that convicts who have violated their parole must serve in prison. If convicts have not committed new crimes and violated only a technical term of their parole (failing a drug test, for example), they are credited for time they spent on parole out of prison before the violation.

Jennifer Brislin, a spokeswoman for the state’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, said officials decided that offenders who do not commit new crimes while on probation deserve some reward. “That should be worth as much as sitting on the state’s dime, behind a fence,” she said.

State Atty. Gen. Jack Conway sued to overturn the thousands of early releases, arguing that a retroactive change to sentences is illegal and risky. The case was heard before the Kentucky Supreme Court in August.

“To go back retroactively as a budget-saving measure and . . . release violent offenders is, to me, irresponsible,” Conway said.

Still, Conway said that he too was concerned about the prison population, and that he wanted to bring it down by targeting nonviolent offenders for early release and expanding drug courts.

“If we’re going to deal with the issue,” he said, “we have to be smart about it.”
source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-prison-release5-2009sep05,0,5705309.story