Posted on Fri, Sep. 08, 2006

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McMaster wants to end parole

The Associated Press

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster told lawmakers Thursday that his plan to help reform the state’s criminal justice system involves abolishing parole.

“There’s a certain amount of people that there’s not much you can do” to rehabilitate, McMaster told lawmakers attending the first meeting of the Criminal Justice System Task Force.

The panel, chaired by state Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Hartsville, was appointed by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Glenn McConnell to identify problems within the state’s criminal justice system. McConnell asked the committee to make legislative recommendations by December so he could bring those issues to the full committee in the new legislative session next year.

In 1995, then-Gov. David Beasley signed a bill into law abolishing parole for most serious crimes in South Carolina. The law, which took effect in January 1996, required that criminals convicted of felonies with at least a 20-year sentence must serve at least 85 percent of that sentence.

It’s some of the other crimes not covered under that law that McMaster says he wants to tackle, like attempting a lewd act on a minor younger than 16 or the abuse and neglect of a vulnerable adult.

Criminals still would be eligible to earn sentence reductions up to 15 percent for good behavior, as they are for crimes covered under the 1996 law. But not allowing someone to be eligible for release at the parole board’s discretion for any crime would take the guesswork out of the sentencing process, allowing judges, attorneys and victims to “mark their calendars” with a possible date of a criminal’s release, McMaster said.

To keep prison populations from skyrocketing, McMaster also proposed that some offenders be eligible for alternative sentences not based on time behind bars. “There are a million and one things that could be done at no cost to the taxpayer to implement alternative sentences,” he said, like serving time on crews cleaning up roadways, cutting grass and painting public buildings.

“It would all be up to the sentencing judge in the courtroom. I think that our judges could do a terrific job with that if given the green light.”

McMaster told lawmakers he was inspired to make this proposal by studying the system in Virginia. There, in 1995, then-Gov. George Allen signed into law a policy that implemented truth-in-sentencing for all crimes.

The executive director of Virginia’s Criminal Sentencing Commission when the law was passed says Virginia’s corrections system is seeing benefits from the law. The prison population “slowed down some, because we got smart about how we used prison bed space,” said Erik Finkbeiner, an attorney in Richmond, Va. “It makes sense. You’re not only making the public safer, but you’re using public dollars more effectively.”

A spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford said the governor’s office, which oversees South Carolina’s Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services, would be interested in the proposal after learning more specifics.

“It’s certainly something we’re open to, because we believe that there should be more continuity between the sentence a judge hands down and the amount of time served,” Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said.