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By DOW CHAMBERLAIN
Rappahannock New* Contributing Writer
During the last gubernatorial contest, crime and education were identified as the top two concerns of voters. Little has been said about education since the election, but the crime issue has moved front and center.
Why crime has emerged as the number one issue now is difficult to understand. Despite a few urban, hot pockets of crime, Virginia remains a relatively low crime state. We all want protection from violent criminals, but the fact is Virginia already spends 91 percent more per capita for persons under criminal justice control than the national average. The state’s prison population has nearly doubled in the last ten years. • The governor’s proposal would divert a staggering additional amount of money into the prison system, money that Virginia will have to pay when the present administration is no longer in office. In addition to practically bankrupting the state, this strategy would actually make us less safe from violent crime.
The new plan further blurs the critical distinction between violent offenses (such as murder, rape, robbery, child molestation) for which sentences should indeed be stiffer to protect the public safety; and non-violent offenses (such as crimes against property and drug use) for which alternative sentencing would be both much more cost effective and more effective in reducing recidivism.
If little distinction is made between the methods used to control violent and non-violent offenders, the result is a corrections system which is a) prohibitively expensive, b) overcrowded and unsafe, and c) is pressured to release prisoners early, some of whom are the violent offenders everyone agrees should serve longer sentences. Half of the 23,000 prisoners in Virginia are in the nonviolent category.
•The governor now proposes to
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