Granholm wants to release 5,000 parole-eligible inmates

2/8/2007, 6:32 p.m. ET By DAVID EGGERT The Associated Press

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants to release about 5,000 more parole-eligible inmates next budget year, closing an unspecified number of prisons to slow Michigan's rising prison spending.

The Democratic governor also hopes to change the state's sentencing rules so future nonviolent offenders go to jail instead of prison, and she will consider commuting the sentences of very sick prisoners who cost the state millions of dollars a year in health care.

"We need to decide who we're afraid of and who we're mad at," state Corrections Director Patricia Caruso told lawmakers Thursday during the Granholm administration's budget presentation. "We need to be sure the people we're afraid of are locked up. And we've got to look at the people we're mad at and decide how mad we are. Are we mad enough to spend an average of $33,000 a year to lock them up until they die or until they finish every last day of their sentence?"

Caruso declined to specify which prisons could close, or how many. About 1,500 more inmates are being housed in state prisons this year than officials anticipated — for a record-high of more than 51,000.

Corrections spending would increase 4 percent under the budget proposal, which Caruso attributed to the "incremental cost of doing business." But she told reporters that Michigan could save $92 million next year and millions in future years by:

• paroling 3,400 prisoners, whom parole officials have been reluctant to release without extra supervision, and putting them in halfway houses and fitting them with electronic tethers. "In general, you're not looking at people serving for violent crimes," Caruso said.

• expanding a program that aims to reduce the number of criminals who return to prison, leading 1,600 more inmates to be paroled than expected.

• possibly commuting the sentences of "medically fragile" inmates who aren't likely to recover, foreign nationals that could be deported and elderly prisoners.

• doing away with straddle-cell sentencing so more criminals go to jail and some re-offenders avoid going back to prison.

States such as Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania have more residents than Michigan but incarcerate fewer inmates. Michigan's per-capita incarceration rate is the country's 11th-highest and ranks higher than seven other Great Lakes states.

State budget director Bob Emerson said Michigan's higher incarceration rate hasn't led to significantly lower crime rates.

But an aide to Republican Sen. Alan Cropsey of DeWitt, who will oversee the corrections budget, said Michigan's violent crime rate is higher than nearby states. John Lazet also said offenders committed serious offenses to get a prison sentence rather than jail time or probation.

"He wants to be sure the public safety is protected," Lazet said.

About 17,000 people, or one-third of all state employees, work for the Corrections Department. Its proposed $2 billion budget would account for a fifth of the general fund, state government's main checkbook.

Granholm's changes to the sentencing guidelines would need legislative approval. Other plans such as paroling more inmates wouldn't need lawmakers' consent.

The Michigan Parole Board paroled nearly 11,700 inmates last year, or 51 percent of those considered. That was lower than in 2005, largely because officials became more cautious after Patrick Selepak was mistakenly released from prison and killed three people in February 2006.

Barbara Levine of the Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending, a prisoner advocacy group, supported Granholm's plans but said she could do more. The Parole Board for years has refused to release low-risk offenders, she said.

"Parole is within their immediate control," said Levine, who said sentencing guidelines and other policies have run into legislative opposition in the past.