Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 10 · column 2 of 4 · from the scan, no model involved
ences Thursday that prisons under the current Democratic administration have become overcrowded and escape-prone and liberal parole policies are returning violent criminals to the streets.
Mr. Baliles, who resigned as attorney general July 1 to campaign fulltime, said Mr. Durrette was ignoring vastly improved escape rates and was flip-flopping on the issue of parole.
“Protecting the safety of our citizens is a primary responsibility of state government. And a sound, stable and secure corrections system is a critical element in providing that protection,” Mr. Durrette said.
“Dangerous criminals need to be put behind bars and kept there,” he said.
Mr. Baliles, however, said Virginia’s prison escape rate ' has dropped steadily from the Republican administrations of Gov. Mills Godwin and John Dalton to a record low today under Democratic Gov. Charles S. Robb.
He said there were 305 escapes for a rate of 51.2 per 1,000 inmates under Mr. Godwin in 1975 but only 54 escapes for a rate of 5.2 per 1,000 during the last fiscal year.
Asked to explain this, Mr. Durrette said, “Governor Robb has inherited the legacy of previous Republican administrations which had the foresight to build the necessary facilities to keep our prisoners locked up.”
Durrette accused the State Parole Board of trying to relieve prison overcrowding by releasing violent criminals.
Court operates in secrecy
NEWPORT NEWS — The publicity surrounding the arrest of John A. Walker Jr., accused of supplying Navy secrets to the Soviet Union, has not spilled over to the federal agency that helped build the case against him.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorized the wiretap on Walker’s phone, continues to labor in anonymity — which is just the way it wants it.
“For a long time we didn’t want to acknowledge it was in the building,” said Justice Department spokesman Thomas Stewart. “But we realized that was silly because all the spies knew it.”
Now, officials acknowledge that the court is in the Justice Department building in Washington.
But they won’t tell what floor the court is on.
92.0%