A legislative conference committee working on crime legislation has an opportunity this week to improve the state’s mandatory drug laws without putting the public at risk. Today’s mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes are structured badly. Inmates can’t even make a case for parole and don’t take part in rehabilitation efforts. Once they finish their mandated sentences, they are released without supervision.
No one should be looking to return to the loose “good time credits’’ of decades ago that freed prisoners well before they had paid their debt to society. But the Senate has approved a reasonable reform: Prisoners convicted of drug crimes would be eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of their sentences in state prison. The Parole Board would have the final word, and departing inmates would be subject to post-release supervision. The House, however, is hesitant.
Public safety isn’t served when drug criminals spend long periods in prison — at a cost of $47,000 a year per inmate — and leave without supervision. The system is out of balance again. Parole eligibility is the way to restore it.
