INDIANAPOLIS | To avoid more than $1 billion in new costs within the decade and slow the growth of Indiana's prison population, sentences for drug and theft convictions would be significantly restructured under a proposal endorsed last week by a legislative commission.
The state Criminal Code Evaluation Commission voted 15-0 to recommend the General Assembly reduce some criminal sentences, reclassify certain crimes and rely on probation supervision rather than prison for most nonviolent, low-level felonies.
"This is the right thing to do for our state. It is the right thing to do for our communities," said state Rep. Linda Lawson, D-Hammond. "It's much fairer than it has ever been before, and it's something we should have done for years and years and years."
Indiana's prison population is among the fastest-growing in the nation despite a decline in crime. It's projected to grow an additional 22 percent, to 34,794 by 2017 from 28,474 prisoners currently, at an added cost of $1.2 billion over the next seven years, according to a new report by the Council of State Governments.
The proposed legislation reduces sentences for most drug and theft felonies compared to current law by reclassifying those crimes on a graduated scale.
For example, a person convicted of selling cocaine today is sentenced from six to 20 years in prison if it's less than 3 grams, about the size of a sugar packet, or from 20 to 50 years in prison for selling 3 grams or more. In comparison, the maximum penalty for selling 3 grams of cocaine in Illinois is 15 years in prison.
The proposed legislation sets a maximum penalty of eight years for selling less than 10 grams, 20 years for 10 to 28 grams and 50 years for more than 28 grams. Similar gradations would apply to methamphetamine and other drugs.
The legislation also sets graduated penalties for theft.
Currently, any theft is a felony regardless of the value of the item stolen, with increased penalties for theft of more than $50,000. The proposal makes theft of less than $750 a misdemeanor, with theft between $750 and $50,000 punishable by as many as three years in prison and thefts of more than $50,000 punishable by as many as eight years in prison.
Those changes would allow Indiana "to reserve the most severe sanctions for the most severe offenders," said Marshall Clement, project director of the Council of State Governments' Justice Center. The center presented its study of Indiana's criminal justice and prison systems to the commission last week.
Gov. Mitch Daniels said he supports sentencing changes that save money and reduce prison population growth.
But Lawson, deputy leader of House Democrats, said she's not sure the restructuring plan will be approved by the Republican-controlled General Assembly, even with the Republican governor's endorsement.
"I can see right now several legislators getting up on the House floor and holding direct-mail pieces and saying, 'See this right here; if you vote for this you're going to be soft on crime and they're going to do a piece of literature on you that's going to look just like this,'" Lawson said. "It just depends on how persuasive those legislators are.
"It's certainly good public policy to reduce the amount of people in prison and handle them in a different way, and we don't need to be spending the money on corrections that we are," she said.