Published: November 28, 2008 10:41 pm      

Prisons need action, not more study, senator says

Outgoing Sen. Andy McKenzie has some experienced advice for the Manchin administration — forget a new commission and just get moving on easing crowding in West Virginia’s jails and prisons.

An outgrowth of a recent summit at Stonewall Jackson Resort has been a proposed commission to seek solutions for the burgeoning prison population.

For about a decade now, McKenzie has been hearing about the problem as a member of the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority, so why, he asks, is a new study group needed?

“This isn’t new news, this is old news,” McKenzie, R-Ohio, said Friday.

“I would commend the governor for finally acknowledging this issue and maybe bringing forth some resolution, but I don’t know that we need to recreate the wheel. We have 10 years worth of data.”

Rather than appoint a special study group, McKenzie suggested that Gov. Joe Manchin simply call all the knowledgeable folks into a huddle and decide on a game plan to relieve the congestion behind prison walls.

Only a few weeks ago, the Division of Corrections was struggling with a near 1,200-bed deficiency in penal facilities, and much of that crunch is falling on the 10-facility regional jail system, holding inmates until space is available in one of the prisons for convicted felons.

For years, Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein has pleaded with lawmakers to act on the overcrowding, emphasizing a Georgetown University study shows the issue will only worsen in coming years without some relief.

That research predicts a prison population in excess of 8,000 by 2012. Manchin is expected to name a special commission soon to study means of relieving the overcrowding.

McKenzie, sworn in as Wheeling’s mayor on July 1, will attend his final interims meeting in December, and is leaving with some suggestions he has long preached on the committee.

“Why do we want to continue to study it?” he asked. “We know the problem.”

One solution is to erect a new prison, at an estimated cost of $22 million, but McKenzie feels the Legislature needs to seriously look at programs to put non-violent offenders into community corrections programs so they can continue to earn a paycheck while paying a debt to society.

“We need to use more home confinement,” he said. “We need to use day report centers more.”

A major step is to revisit criminal statutes imposed with an attitude of getting tough on crime so that certain offenders can be returned to society. In recent years, harsher penalties were imposed in what McKenzie views as a fear among proponents that lawmakers might be considered “soft on crime” if they didn’t get tougher.

“I think you’ve also got to look at the front end in seeing why do we continue to criminalize activity or make punishment more severe on a lot of these new statutes,” he said.

“There are a lot of petty crimes that people can still be an asset to society, and that home confinement and day reporting centers fit those crimes. We’re not going to let them get out of punishment. We just need to change the way we punish them. Why put them on the taxpayers’ dole when they can still be actively employed, they can still actively contribute to society? It’s just they pay for it, not the taxpayers. Violent offenders are off the table. You put them in jail.”

In lieu of a commission, McKenzie says the governor merely needs to round up those with the facts.

“I think you get them in a room and say, ‘OK, we already know what the problem is, we already know the growth, how do we solve the problem?’ I hope he’s not trying to figure out how we got there. We already know how we got there. Now, we need to figure out how we fund day reporting centers and home confinement.”

McKenzie applauded Rubenstein as “the finest commissioner among the states, bar none,” noting West Virginia has been spared some of the serious matters that plague penal systems in other states.

He also said the state needs to reform its drunken driving statute even further because the system is out of kilter.

“We as politicians don’t want to send the wrong message that, ‘boy, if you get caught in West Virginia, you’re not going to get punished,’” he said.

“No, let’s punish them in many ways. Let’s just not cost the taxpayers a tremendous burden in our jail system unless they commit a death or injury while they’re DUI. That’s different.”

After 10 years of hearing talk about overcrowded prisons and jails, McKenzie said he hopes the state will finally accelerate efforts for a resolution.

“I’m very frustrated,” he said. “We study and bring a lot of great facts, but when we present them to the Senate president and House speaker, we never enact any of them.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com