Saving Tax Money Cuts Prison Time
A law intended to save taxpayers $6 million by lopping time off the sentences of Oregon’s nonviolent prisoners has unwittingly opened freedom’s door early to hundreds of violent inmates. News from the Oregonian.
They include Troy Lee Hischar, who fired a bullet so close to his ex-girlfriend’s skull that it clipped off a tuft of hair; Raul Peña-Jimenez, who gave a 16-year-old girl drugs and alcohol before sexually assaulting her; and Joseph Duane Betts, a convicted child molester who exposed himself to two boys.
Nearly 800 of the 2,397 inmates approved for reduced sentences were sent to prison for crimes as serious as robbery, arson and attempted murder or had previous convictions for crimes against people, The Oregonian found in an examination of state corrections data.The new law, which passed as part of budget cuts by the Legislature, made thieves, drug dealers and other lower-risk prisoners eligible for a 10 percent reduction in their sentences.
But lawmakers acknowledge they left more than a dozen serious crimes off the list of offenses that disqualify inmates from reduced sentences. So prisoners could get extra time off for crimes such as assaulting police officers, sexually abusing children or committing certain kinds of arson or robbery.
“I call it an oversight,” Prozanski says. “Just like any major piece of legislation, we have now realized there are some crimes we intended to include that we are going to include.”
Dozens of prisoners qualified for early release even though they were accused of crimes committed in prison, such as attacking corrections staffers, possessing dangerous weapons and downloading child pornography on a prison computer.
The law also does not consider inmates’ previous histories of violence, and it opens the door to those serving time for multiple offenses during a violent crime. For example, a carjacker who completes a sentence for armed robbery can then win early release on a consecutive sentence for stealing a car.
“They need to repeal this law,” says Dean Gushwa, Umatilla County’s district attorney. “I can’t believe that they ever intended for this law to shave time off sentences for violent offenders.”
Key architects of the statute, Prozanski and then-Rep. Chip Shields, D-Portland, say the law has generally played out as expected. The average inmate to win a sentence reduction gets out 59 days early, saving taxpayers $84 a day. However, Shields acknowledges, some of them are hardened criminals.
“There are very few saints in prison,” says Shields, now a state senator, “which is why this can’t happen in an easy way.”
Prosecutors and victims rights advocates say the new law has freed violent criminals, clogged court dockets, reopened wounds for crime victims and appears to be a sneaky way of tampering with mandatory minimum sentencing laws.
Much more to read on the Oregonian.
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