Shaving sentences is rational approach to cut prison budget

It's hard to see sentences lopped off for any reason,
but a 30 percent reduction, if properly overseen, is not a bad idea

Recently, the state of Oregon put Janet Tremain through a cruel rerun. Tremain had every reason to think the judicial system had dealt with the hit-and-run driver who killed her daughter.

Then, suddenly, the state added a postscript. It proposed cutting the driver's sentence by nearly a third. As The Oregonian's Aimee Green reported this week, Tremain had to fight and plead to make the sentence stick. This should never have happened.

But it didn't come out of nowhere. Earlier this year, the Oregon Legislature passed a new law to help plug an $82 million hole in the corrections budget. Until the law sunsets in 2013, some prisoners eligible to earn a 20 percent reduction in time served for good behavior may be eligible for 30 percent instead.

In this biennium, we will spend $1.4 billion on corrections. Sending home a few thousand prisoners early could save $6 million, which may sound like plucking an eyebrow on a behemoth. But every dollar saved on a sentence may ultimately help to preserve the front lines of public safety: state patrol officers.

In January, remember, voters will decide whether to approve $733 million in tax increases to fill craters in the state budget. Depending on what happens, our state may soon be bracing for unprecedented cuts.

In this context, sending some prisoners home earlier is almost a no-brainer. But -- and it's a big but -- only property offenders were supposed to qualify for this reduction. Never, under any circumstances, were violent offenders supposed to be eligible.

Unfortunately, the Legislature doesn't seem to have understood that hit-and-run driving is "violent."

And that is, plainly, an oversight. Sen. Jeff Barker, D-Aloha, the former police officer who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that he would propose fixes as soon as February to eliminate that, and any other, loopholes in the new law. "This is not what we intended," Barker said. "We don't want anyone who commits violent crimes out early."

It's important to point out that the judge who oversaw the sentence reduction hearing in the Tremain case turned it down.

Judicial oversight is the "fail-safe on the system" that will help to ensure it won't go astray, Max Williams, director of state corrections, said Tuesday.

A reduction in sentence is never automatic. Not only does a judge determine eligibility, but the prisoner himself must earn it -- and keep earning it -- through good behavior.

By the way, the average amount the state has reduced sentences, thus far, is 54 days. So, yes, some convicts scheduled to return soon will be returning sooner -- about two months ahead of schedule. And, in some cases, that will no doubt be hard to stomach.

But in the context of the dark, grim, miserable budgetary choices ahead, shaved sentences may soon begin to seem small, in comparison.

To view the article on the Oregonian website, Shaving sentences is rational approach to cut prison budget