The Legislature didn’t do much work Friday, as lawmakers moved into their temporary digs in the Bill Ray Center while the Capitol is under construction.
When House members return on Monday, they’ll debate whether to overhaul the state’s criminal sentencing laws. Supporters say the legislation will lower the risk of offenders returning to crime, but others are concerned that the bill goes too far in reducing penalties.
Senate Bill 91 is one of the most hotly debated bills of the session. It would allow law enforcement officials to substitute citations for arrests for lower-level nonviolent offenses. It also would focus prison beds on more serious and violent offenders and create a re-entry program within the Department of Corrections. But the House Finance Committee scaled back some of these changes. Committee members cited concerns from some victims’ rights advocates who say the bill isn’t tough enough on offenders.
Bill sponsor North Pole Republican Senator John Coghill says he remains hopeful that the bill will become law. He emphasizes the benefits of a pretrial program that would divert low-risk prisoners away from jail.
“We’re going to do risk-based assessments for the first time ever in pretrial,” Coghill said. “It’s still there. We’re going to allow them for diversion to programs for the first time ever, the way we’re doing it under a risk-based system.”
Coghill based the original bill on the recommendations of the Alaska Criminal Justice Commission. For example, the commission recommended raising the value of items that are stolen that require criminal charges, from 750 dollars to two thousand dollars. The House Finance Committee settled on raising the line between theft misdemeanors and crimes to one thousand dollars.
But Finance Committee co-chairman Big Lake Republican Mark Neuman was troubled by the possibility of letting thieves go because they stole less than a thousand dollars of valuables.
“It seems to me like we’re trying to make it so, let’s make it so a crook has a lighter sentence or gets off easier here, because of inflation,” said Neuman. “And I don’t like that. A crook is a crook.”
Alaska Public Defender Quinlan Steiner says that while the amended House and Senate bills would save less than the original legislation would have, the effects would still be positive.
“The bill as I see it will likely still result in significant savings that can be used to reinvest in programs that will reduce recidivism,” Steiner said.
Coghill says his original bill would have cut the state’s prison population by 21 percent, saving more than 400 million dollars a year. He says the House Finance Committee substitute would reduce the prison population by roughly 8 to 10 percent.
The House is scheduled to debate the bill – and potentially vote whether to pass or amend the measure – on Monday. Coghill says he expects a debate over whether to require jail time for lower-level crimes. Another debate will likely focus on how much credit people in pretrial programs should receive, to reduce the time they have to serve.
Coghill says he welcomes the legislative debate over the bill, which has differed from the commission’s consensus-driven approach.
“It just goes to show that when we’re making law, it gets down to specifics, and it’s not consensus driven – it’s vote-driven,” said Coghill. “And so, that’s appropriate – that’s what the process is all about.”
The crime bill is the most significant bill left on the Legislature’s agenda that’s not primarily focused on the budget.
Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the Bill Ray Center.
Andrew Kitchenman is the state government and politics reporter for Alaska Public Media and KTOO in Juneau. Reach him at akitchenman@alaskapublic.org.
