Parole drop drives prison growth
Capitol Report for dailies for week of May 6, 2007
By Jim Campbell
OPA Capitol News Bureau
The prison space crisis could not appear worse - no beds, arrivals stopped at the reception center, jails jammed with inmates awaiting transfer and even a report an old eastern Oklahoma Army base might be put to use.
Yet, says the chairman of the Oklahoma Sentencing Commission, the outlook is worse. The Department of Corrections can expect the inmate population to grow by 900 inmates in the next fiscal year at an additional cost of $16 million, swelling to more than 28,780 by 2016.
"I can't understand why the Legislature does not want to deal with this issue," said Sen. Richard Lerblance, D-Hartshorne.
Where to house them, particularly after loss of 800 beds in closing of the Hinton private prison? "Good question," he said. "I can't imagine it but I've even heard about using Camp Gruber. There are now just 40 beds open and they have to keep them open for transfers."
Each year the sentencing commission is required by law to make recommendations for coping with the population and each year it is all but ignored, he said. The panel has been making the projections for the past 10 years because lawmakers suspected the DOC might be padding its figures.
Lerblance said removing the governor from the parole process in non-violent cases, as he has proposed the last two years, might have reduced the current crunch.
This year's higher projection by the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Resource Center, the commission's research arm, is driven not so much by more inmates coming in as by drastically fewer going out the gates. 
Prison releases through paroles and commutation dropped for the third straight year, from 2,428 in 2003 to 846 in 2006, a 71 percent drop. Meanwhile, there was an increase from 53 in 2000 to 3,671 last year in "deadly sin" offenders required to serve 85 percent of their terms before parole consideration.
Eliminating the governor's role would take a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment. Over the years, lawmakers involved in corrections issues have concluded the present parole policy is popular within and without the Legislature.
Gov. Brad Henry's spokesman, Paul Sund, said Henry bases his parole decisions on public safety rather than growth projections.
"The parole system was never designed to be a prison overcrowding release valve," Sund said.
Corrections Director Justin Jones forecast the current crisis at an early House committee meeting and said he might have to interrupt receptions. Last week he suggested the Pardon and Parole Board think about a special commutation for non-violent inmates, an option rejected by Henry.
"We're the only state where the governor has this role in the parole process," Lerblance said.
Two-thousand fewer inmates were considered for parole or commutation in 2006 than in 2001 or 2002, a 23 percent decline, the report said.
As bad as the population figures are, they do not reflect the possible consequence of 78 bills in the 2007 Legislature that could add felonies or affect sentence length. The county jail backup also might be affected by confinement of undocumented aliens under the new immigration bill, should it become law.
The average offender now spends 55 days in county custody awaiting a prison cell. The OCJRC said the number of back-up increased by 8 percent this year and by 124 percent from 2001 to 2006.
OCJRC Director K. C. Moon said a decline in sentence length in the present report could be a result of more offenders charged with drug crimes as opposed to murder.  He also noted a "two year hump" in population growth that might follow election cycles.
The budget agreement forged by House Republicans and both parties in the Senate included a $1 million audit of the DOC.
Senate co-President Glenn Coffee of Oklahoma City said hopes are the audit will show ways to avoid the annual crisis that calls for supplemental appropriations.
"Absolutely," Coffee said, corrections is "an issue we're going to have to continue to address."
Lerblance said the audit would have "no effect on population growth. I think it's a waste of money anyway."
He pointed to a bill this year making copper theft a felony as an example of "tough on crime" legislation that leads to prison crowding. The author, he said, gave a "flat no" to his suggestion for a bond issue to pay for more prison space.
"I put it all on the back of the Legislature," he said.
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Negotiators for Henry and the Legislature will have another $175 million to spend next fiscal year, thanks to increased revenues included in a report due next Tuesday.  The money will spill over from the brimming "rainy day" fund, after a $76 million deposit brings it to a record $495.7 million.
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