Reports could cut incarceration rate

Refined versions of pre-sentence investigation reports, called Sentencing Assessment Reports, may help expedite the sentencing of Missouri criminals or encourage less costly alternative sentences that don’t add to the state’s already densely populated prisons.

The Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission and the Board of Probation and Parole introduced a streamlined Sentencing Assessment Report statewide Nov. 1. The key feature of the reports is a numerical ranking that gives judges the odds that an offender will re-offend. Probation officers use personal history, criminal history and demographics to predict whether someone is a viable candidate for parole or likely to keep committing crimes.

The reports, according to Kim Green, executive director of the Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission, help judges use their discretion to assign sentences that are more likely to be carried out to fruition.

“One of the things that will be contained in the report is what the Probation and Parole Board says a person will serve on this sentence, and then what they’ve actually been serving in the past, which are usually two completely different numbers,” Green said. “Judges really want to see that, because … they sentence somebody to five years and they’re out in a year, and they want to know that.”

The reports also will get to judges more quickly.

Officials say that the streamlined reports will take 30 days to reach the desk of a requesting judge, as opposed to the 60 days or more that it took prior to the changes. The reports will be used at the state and county levels, but not at the federal level. Because the reports can be used at both of those levels, county jails, as well as state prisons, could be affected by the new reports.

Green said the reports aim to alleviate prison overcrowding by emphasizing alternative sentences for nonviolent offenders. He said the reports don’t invent new alternative sentences but simply put renewed emphasis on them.

“This is serious stuff,” he said. “You’re talking about a person’s freedom.”

He said sentencing alternatives for nonviolent criminals, such as prison work programs, work release, home-based incarceration, probation and parole, and restorative justice can save room in penitentiaries for violent criminals.

“It’s hard to find anything safer than making sure that you’ve got beds for the bad guys,” Green said.

According to the MOSAC Web site, Missouri’s prison population has risen to more than 30,000 now from 15,409 in 1993. It said nonviolent offenders comprised 46 percent of the state prison population in 1993 but now comprise 55 percent.

Green said alternative sentences offer significant savings.

He said two months of data from six test programs, extrapolated for the entire state for a full year, indicate the reports would have prevented 1,097 criminals from receiving prison sentences. He said that would have saved $14 million, since it costs $38.32 per day to keep a criminal in prison but only $2.73 to supervise someone on probation or parole.

He said only time will tell the real financial savings, since the judges’ use of the reports and their recommendations are voluntary. But the Department of Corrections estimated a savings of $19 million per year in Senate Bill 5, the legislation that introduced the Sentencing Assessment Reports in 2003.

Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore said he likes the new reports, but added that they are limited in their ability to impact prison crowding and other problems.

“The prison crowding is not going to go away by adopting the Sentencing Assessment Reports,” Moore said. “It’s going to take other things that work to do that.

“All this Sentencing Assessment Report is going to do is have a quicker turnaround time so we should be able to sentence people more quickly. (And), make sure we’re considering all possible alternatives to imprisonment, where it’s a feasible option. And that’s about it. It’s not going to be a magic cure for prison overcrowding.”

Springfield defense attorney Dee Wampler said he likes the reports, and he’s in favor of more informed judicial decisions, but he hopes the advice in the reports doesn’t become mandate.

“The nature of the beast of the government is to grow,” Wampler said. “You get something started like this, it wants to grow.”

MOSAC’s Green said the reports will likely evolve over time, though he believes they will not interfere with judicial discretion.

“It’s been fine-tuned,” Green said. “Will it change again in the future? I’m pretty sure it probably will, because we’re going to look at the data we get … and see what does need to be changed.”

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