Legislature(2015 - 2016)BELTZ 105 (TSBldg)
03/09/2016 01:30 PM Senate JUDICIARY
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| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| SB182 | |
| SB91 | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| *+ | SB 182 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | SB 91 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | TELECONFERENCED | ||
SB 91-OMNIBUS CRIM LAW & PROCEDURE; CORRECTIONS
2:17:34 PM
CHAIR MCGUIRE announced the consideration of SSSB 91. [This was
the first hearing and CSSSSB 91(STA) was before the committee.]
2:17:38 PM
SENATOR JOHN COGHILL, Alaska State Legislature, Juneau, Alaska,
sponsor of SB 91, introduced the legislation speaking to the
following sponsor statement:
Senate Bill 91 implements proven practices to reduce
recidivism, keep Alaskans safe, hold offenders
accountable, and control corrections spending.
Increased spending on prisons has not brought Alaskans
greater public safety: nearly two out of every three
inmates who leave prison return to prison within three
years. The high rate of recidivism has significantly
increased Department of Corrections operating costs to
$324 million in FY 2016, and spurred the opening of
the Goose Creek Correctional Center, costing the state
$240 million in construction funds.
Alaska Criminal Justice Commission
Seeking a better public safety return on our state's
corrections spending, the legislature established the
Alaska Criminal Justice Commission. The Commission
included legislators, judges, law enforcement
officers, prosecutors, defenders, corrections
officials, and members representing crime victims and
Alaska Natives. The Commission spent over a year
conducting an exhaustive review of the state's
pretrial, sentencing, corrections, and community
supervision data and systems.
SB 91 Incorporates the Commission's Recommendations
The Commission developed a package of consensus
recommendations that will reduce the state's daily
prison population by 21 percent over the next 10
years, saving the state $424 million. SB 91 aims to:
· Implement evidence-based pretrial practices by
expanding the use of citations in lieu of arrest
for lower-level nonviolent offenses; and making
changes to bail practices to focus pretrial
release decisions more on risk than on ability to
pay.
· Focus prison beds on serious and violent
offenders by diverting nonviolent misdemeanor
offenders to alternatives; revising drug crime
penalties; adjusting dollar amounts for felony
property crimes to account for inflation;
realigning sentence ranges in statute, expanding
and streamlining parole; and incentivizing sex
offenders to complete treatment programming.
· Strengthen probation and parole supervision by
standardizing sanctions for violations of
probation and parole conditions to ensure they
are swift, certain, and proportional;
establishing incentives to comply with
supervision conditions; and focusing treatment
resources on high-needs offenders.
· Improve opportunities for successful reentry by
offering limited licenses to eligible revoked
offenders; creating a reentry program within the
Department of Corrections; and opting out of the
federal ban on food stamps for people convicted
of drug crimes.
Reinvest a portion of the savings from these reforms
into evidence-based practices designed to improve
public safety, control corrections populations, and
reduce recidivism, including supervision services,
victims' services, violence prevention, treatment
services, and reentry services.
Cost of Doing Nothing: $169 Million
Alaska's prison population grew 27 percent in the last
decade, nearly three times faster than the resident
population. At this rate, the Department of
Corrections projects the need to house an additional
1,416 inmates by 2024, which will cost the state at
least $169 million in new spending. With the
disappointing recidivism rates and public safety
outcomes the state has been achieving, the cost of
doing nothing is too high.
2:27:29 PM
JORDAN SHILLING, Staff, Senator John Coghill, responding to a
question from the sponsor, reported that 95 percent of offenders
will return to their communities.
2:28:34 PM
SENATOR COGHILL informed the committee that in an effort to turn
the corner on recidivism the Speaker of the House, Governor, and
Chief Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court wrote letters to the
PEW Charitable Trusts ("PEW") requesting technical help looking
at Alaska recidivism statistics compared to other states. He
said they brought statistics that many hadn't seen before and he
believes "we're looking at ourselves in a very new way." He
noted that there was some pushback but it wasn't unexpected.
He reviewed the following key findings:
· The pretrial inmate population has grown 81 percent in the
last decade.
· Half of the pretrial defendants are detained on nonviolent
charges, including misdemeanors.
· The bail system is tied to money, not risk.
· 28 percent of the prison population is pretrial.
· The length of stay for felonies rose 31 percent over the
last decade.
· 75 percent of offenders entering prison were convicted of a
nonviolent crime.
· 20 percent of the population are incarcerated for technical
violations.
2:30:59 PM
SENATOR MICCICHE joined the committee.
SENATOR COGHILL noted that the Alaska Criminal Justice
Commission annual report to the legislature on page 10 lists the
21 recommendations to decrease corrections costs and protect
public safety.
He directed attention to the color-coded sheet in the packet
that cross references the bill section with the list of
recommended policies for the categories of pretrial, sentencing,
community supervision, and other. He mentioned the pretrial
category and the policy called "citation versus arrest" that is
addressed in Sections 33-35. Additional pretrial policies are
"risk-based release decision making," and "pretrial
supervision." He noted that pretrial supervision will be part of
the reinvestment that will cost money and require different
treatment of prison beds.
SENATOR COGHILL listed the recommended policies in the
sentencing category for "misdemeanors," "controlled substances,"
"felony theft threshold," "presumptive ranges," "discretionary
parole/administrative parole," "geriatric parole," and "sex
offender treatment."
CHAIR MCGUIRE clarified that a series of U.S. Supreme Court
decisions affect what the state legislature has had to do to
comport with those opinions. She mentioned the Blakely vs.
Washington ruling that said presumptive sentences were okay and
mandatory minimum sentences could be held at a higher level. She
asked the sponsor to explain the interplay with Blakely and
whether or not this bill would challenge that ruling.
SENATOR COGHILL, speaking to the presumptive sentencing
provisions in Sections 67-69, said those ranges could probably
be moved to a mid range but aggravators and mitigators would
still have to be argued at sentencing.
CHAIR MCGUIRE added that states that had the circumstances of
aggravators and mitigators had to have a separate trial unless
they were a tenet of the original sentencing.
She asked Mr. Shilling to discuss the proposed policy for
controlled substances in sentencing.
2:42:01 PM
MR. SHILLING explained that the commission recommended two
aspects of sentencing related to drugs. One is related to
commercial drug delivery/dealing and the other is related to
simple drug possession. Existing law does not differentiate
between a high-level and low-level drug dealer so the commission
recommended creating a 2.5 gram weight threshold to
differentiate the two. Dealing above 2.5 grams of certain
substances would be a higher level felony and dealing below the
2.5 gram threshold would be a lower level felony. The goal is to
differentiate between the drug trafficker and someone who
presumably is selling to support their habit.
For simple possession, the commission recommended creating a 2.5
gram weight threshold.
CHAIR MCGUIRE asked how the sponsor arrived at the 2.5 gram
threshold. She also asked if he had any comment on the
disproportionate and potentially discriminatory sentencing for
users of crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Arguably, people
in a lower economic class would use crack, whereas a white
collar criminal would be more likely to use powder cocaine.
MR. SHILLING said the 2.5 gram threshold is admittedly
arbitrary, but the original recommendation was a 5 gram
threshold. He admitted that there are incongruences when all
drugs are considered together and a weight threshold is
established. He suggested the committee might want to look at
that to try and diminish the incongruities.
SENATOR COGHILL suggested the committee deal with each category
of the bill separately, preferably in the order mentioned
previously.
CHAIR MCGUIRE said she likes the idea of dividing the bill in
the four major areas of "pretrial," "sentencing," "community
supervision," and "other." Public testimony would open once the
committee has a solid understanding of what the bill does in
each of the categories and the controversial areas have been
flagged. She asked future testifiers to point to the specific
provisions they have concerns with and avoid generalizations.
She relayed her intention to spend two weeks on the bill and
send it along to the Finance Committee in perfect legal form.
She noted that she flagged the weight threshold and stated her
preference to consider dosage and usage.
SENATOR COGHILL reviewed his approach to consider the bill and
suggested the committee rely heavily on the Department of Law,
the Public Defender, and the Court System to understand how the
bill will work in practice.
2:49:58 PM
SENATOR COGHILL explained that the community supervision
category includes policy recommendations for graduated
sanctions/incentives, cap in technical violation stays,
probation earned credit, maximum probation terms, good-time on
electronic monitoring, and CRCs - halfway houses.
SENATOR MICCICHE requested a copy of the sponsor's crib notes.
CHAIR MCGUIRE requested the crib notes and a document showing
the changes between the original bill and the State Affairs
committee substitute.
SENATOR COGHILL discussed the policy recommendations for limited
driver's license, administrative license revocations, food
stamps, public assistance, re-entry program, community work,
limiting pretrial credit to 120 days, suspended entry of
judgment, and victim's rights, all of which are in the "other"
category.
He noted that the State Affairs Committee inserted a provision
requiring a drug and alcohol test to qualify for public
assistance. He said he doesn't know if it's constitutional, but
any number of jobs require similar testing as a matter of public
safety. He opined that there shouldn't be a privacy issue.
2:54:36 PM
CHAIR MCGUIRE said it's an equal protection under the law issue
and she'll be looking for the nexus and equal application.
SENATOR COGHILL indicated he was open to the discussion.
He asked Mr. Shilling to supplement the discussion on community
work.
2:57:24 PM
MR. SHILLING described the two aspects to the community work
service change. One is to prevent the conversion of community
work service hours to prison time. The commission felt it was
odd that there was a non-incarceration option that could be
converted to incarceration. There was some thought that the
state shouldn't pay for someone to spend 10-15 days in prison
simply because they couldn't or didn't want to complete their
community work service. The second aspect is if there is an
indigent offender who is required to pay a fine, there is an
option in statute for them to work off the fine. Existing
statute says $3 and the bill links the work to the minimum wage.
CHAIR MCGUIRE asked if restitution could be included.
MR. SHILLING said he would look into that.
SENATOR COGHILL asked Mr. Shilling to speak to limiting pretrial
credit to 120 days.
MR. SHILLING explained that the provision to cap the pretrial
credit to 120 days was at the request of the Office of Victims'
Rights. Anecdotal reports were that the day-for-day jail credit
equivalency for spending time on electronic monitoring created
an incentive for defendants to delay their trial in perpetuity
to get that credit.
SENATOR COGHILL asked Mr. Shilling to discuss the suspended
entry of judgment.
MR. SHILLING explained that it is very similar to the existing
suspended imposition of sentence. A person admits their guilt
and if they successfully complete some programs, their
conviction is set aside. The major difference is the judgment
wouldn't be entered in the first place and would provide some
record confidentiality upon completion of the SIJ.
SENATOR COGHILL added that the case will be viewable on
CourtView while the case is active, which was a request of the
Office of Victims' Rights.
3:02:07 PM
CHAIR MCGUIRE thanked the sponsor and his staff and held SB 91
in committee.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|---|---|
| SB182 Sponsor Statement.pdf |
SJUD 3/9/2016 1:30:00 PM |
SB 182 |
| SB182 Supporting Documents-Family Tree DNA Letter.pdf |
SJUD 3/9/2016 1:30:00 PM |
SB 182 |
| SB182 ver H.PDF |
SJUD 3/9/2016 1:30:00 PM |
SB 182 |