7 Things lawmakers need to consider when reforming corrections policy.

• Author: Lyons, Donna
• Position: CRIMINAL JUSTICE

State lawmakers are reforming sentencing laws and correction policies across the country. They have two key objectives: Quickly cut state spending on corrections Rand ensure public safety is protected in the future.

With one in 100 American adults behind bars and one in 31 under correctional supervision, many lawmakers are questioning traditional assumptions about prison and rehabilitation. Recent studies and reforms show states can be smarter on crime and easier on taxpayers. Many new policies not only look to hold offenders accountable, reduce crime and victimization, but also to be sensitive to corrections costs.

A recent NCSL work group looked at this issue and developed seven principles of effective state sentencing and corrections policies.

Principle 1. Make sentencing and corrections policies fair, consistent, proportionate and with the opportunity for rehabilitation.

States have modified drug sentencing laws, including allowing many nonviolent offenders to be under community supervision and receive substance abuse treatment. Since 1973, New York has had some of the nation's toughest mandatory sentences for drug offenses, referred to as the Rockefeller drug laws because they were signed into law by then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Over several years, the New York Legislature has revised the penalties for nonviolent drug crimes, expanded eligibility for treatment, and, most recently, allowed some offenders sentenced under the Rockefeller laws to apply for resentencing.

This year in Kentucky, the General Assembly established new drug quantity thresholds to distinguish drug users from more serious drug traffickers. Increasingly, state policies call for broadly screening felony defendants for substance abuse, diverting some to community supervision and sending others to secure treatment.

"For possession offenses, we always just locked them up and they come back out in the same position, with the same problems as before, but now they also have a criminal record," says Kentucky Senator Tom Jensen. "By deferring prosecution and providing an opportunity for treatment, there is a chance to turn your life around and avoid that record."

Principle 2. Have a sentencing rationale that is clear and purposeful, and make related policies logicaL understandable and transparent.

States that have successfully reduced the growth in prison populations and its associated costs have worked specifically on reducing the high rates of recidivism. More than 40 percent of parolees nationwide return to prison within three years for new crimes or violating the terms of their release, according to the Pew Center on the States.

Faced with a growing prison population and projections that Texas would need at least $2 billion in the next five years for prison construction, lawmakers in 2007 identified and focused on the...