A Texas man who took hostages in a northwestern Indiana realty office and held police at bay for several hours suffered three gunshot wounds before dying, likely from two different weapons, a coroner said Saturday. Roy L.INDIANAPOLIS – Gov. Mitch Daniels on Wednesday hailed the recommendations of a criminal justice study that would hold the state’s prison population steady by, in part, giving less prison time but more community supervision to low-level offenders.
Judges, prosecutors, legislators and others joined Daniels to endorse the plan, which was the result of a partnership with the Pew Center on the States and the Council of State Governments Justice Center.
Few specifics were provided – the full report will be released today – but the governor said the package will bring “more certain and firm punishment to the worst offenders in Indiana, more sensible smarter incarceration for those who pose much less of a physical danger to Hoosiers and, as a byproduct of that, grace for taxpayers in the sense of lower costs in the years ahead.”
On a related note, Daniels announced the state has reached agreement with a private corrections firm to build a 512-bed, maximum-security addition next to the New Castle Correctional Facility. It’s expected to be completed by February 2012.
The GEO Group, which currently operates New Castle, will finance and operate the new prison. The state will pay a $37 per diem for each prisoner housed there – $5 less than the state cost of $42.
The term of the contract with GEO is 10 years, with two, five-year renewal options. The state takes ownership of the expansion after 20 years.
Despite that announcement, Daniels wants to focus on ways to reduce prison-building in the future.
The Pew report found Indiana’s prison population has grown by more than 40 percent – or about 8,000 offenders – in the past 10 years. That is three times faster than any neighboring state, and the growth has come because more people convicted of property and drug offenses are being sentenced to prison.
With no changes, the state’s prison population is expected to grow from about 29,000 to almost 35,000 in 2017.
Daniels said the recommendations from the study, if adopted, would save the state $1.2 billion in future prison construction and operating costs and hold the prison population roughly steady in coming years.
There are three proposed categories of policy changes for legislators to enact:
•Improve proportionality in sentencing and ensure prison space for the worst offenders by creating a more precise set of drug and theft sentencing laws and providing judges with more sentencing options for individuals who commit the least serious felony offenses.
•Strengthen community supervision by focusing resources on high-risk offenders and creating incentives for supervision agencies to coordinate better with one another.
•Reduce recidivism and bolster public safety by increasing access to community-based substance abuse and mental health treatment and enabling probation offices to respond with more effective, swift and certain sanctions.
“This really is good government at its best,” said Richard Jerome, manager of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project. “You have all three branches coming together, really rolling up their sleeves, digging into the data and the evidence and coming up with solutions that are pragmatic and that work for the state.”
Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, said the state is not pushing the cost onto local jails or community corrections programs through unfunded mandates.
Instead he noted the plan calls for the state to invest $27 million in probation improvements, community-based, substance-abuse treatment and low-level felony reduction in the next six years.
The money will be used to reward local programs that produce good results.
Bills to make specific changes will be introduced in both the House and Senate, but legislators wouldn’t say what’s in them.
“There are so many aspects it’s hard to encapsulate,” said Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford.
Allen Superior Court Judge John Surbeck, a member of the steering committee for the study, explained one specific change regarding theft and drug possession. He said that other states have multitiered systems that increase punishment based on the amount of drug possessed or amount of money or property stolen.
But Indiana has only two tiers, meaning someone who steals a compact disc can be charged with a felony. Likewise, someone carrying only a small amount of cocaine can be charged with a felony.
One of the recommendations is to change the classes of offense so more theft and drug possession cases are charged as misdemeanors. And judges would get more discretion to sentence offenders to probation or other programs.
Surbeck said he hoped political pressure on legislators afraid of being viewed as “soft on crime” wouldn’t derail the package.
“This has to go through in a package. It can’t get fragmented or everything gets worse rather than better,” Surbeck said. “Some of the changes they want to make will be leveraged with the financial piece. You can’t do one without the other.”
