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Monday, September 07, 2009

Ind. Gov't. - More on "Lights Out at the Penitentiary: Strapped States are Shutting Prisons"

Updating this ILB entry from Sept. 5th, which included this quote:

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. * * *

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.

Read the Sept. 5th entry in conjunction with this lengthy story by Kevin O'Neal in today's Indianapolis Star, headed "Killer's early release in pastor's 1993 slaying sparks outrage." Some quotes:
Sixteen years ago this month, Dean Kernodle watched in horror as Elizabeth Mayberry gunned down the pastor at his Hendricks County church.

Today, Kernodle is outraged that Mayberry will be released in a few weeks after serving 16 years of the 60-year sentence a judge gave her for the murder of the Rev. Roland "Ron" Phillips Jr. * * *

Now, the case is putting renewed focus on sentencing policies that allow some people to be released early from prison for good behavior and for getting an education while behind bars. * * *

Psychiatrists who testified at Mayberry's weeklong trial disagreed about whether she was insane when she killed Phillips. A Hendricks County jury found Mayberry guilty but mentally ill, and the presiding judge, Mary Lee Comer, gave her the maximum 60-year sentence.

Later, the Indiana Supreme Court reduced the sentence to 40 years. The court ruled on an appeal in 1996 that Mayberry was mentally ill at the time she shot Phillips, which should have been considered a mitigating factor in her sentence.

Like all Indiana prison inmates, Mayberry also benefited from standard Department of Correction procedures that allow a day off a sentence for every day of good behavior. Inmates with a clean record behind bars typically serve only half the sentence a judge gives them.

Inmates can earn further reductions in their sentences by obtaining college degrees while they're in prison. Mayberry completed studies in vocation printing and drafting, and received an associate's degree in business administration and a bachelor's degree in general education.

Those educational accomplishments earned her the maximum four years of credit time that the DOC allows.

The idea of education credit for Indiana inmates goes back to the 1980s. Leslie Duvall, a former member of the Indiana Senate, advanced the idea during the years he served on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Lightening a sentence to improve themselves behind bars, I still favor that," said Duvall, now 85. "My fingerprints are all over that legislation. It's an option the DOC has for self-improvement."

In the 2008-09 school year, the Department of Correction had 3,301 inmates taking college classes; 940 received degrees and credit time on their sentences.

Getting a college degree in prison improves the chances for prisoners to succeed once their sentence has expired, according to an inmate advocate.

"The best guarantee of reducing recidivism is education," said Larry Landis, executive director of the Indiana Public Defender Council. "Education is in effect a way to empower yourself. You see that you have a choice and an option other than the depressing cycle of crime."
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Prosecutors across Indiana have complained that some inmates have taken college courses more to have time subtracted from their sentences than to prepare themselves for life beyond prison, said Stephen Johnson, executive director of the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council.

Although there's no hint of a problem with Mayberry's accomplishments, prosecutors have worried about inmates misusing the education credits to get more time off their sentences than they deserve.

The whole system of good time and credit time, along with the possibility of sentence reduction through appeals, makes it hard for prosecutors to tell victims' families how long a defendant will stay in prison, Johnson said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 7, 2009 12:45 PM
Posted to Indiana Government