PANEL HEARS DEBATE ON HANDLING AGING INMATES

ANGOLA -- Ernest Brown is 61 and has been imprisoned at Louisiana State
Penitentiary for the past 26 years, serving a life sentence for selling $60
worth of heroin.

James Jones is 71 and has been shut away at Angola for the past 25 years,
serving life for selling $120 worth of heroin.

Leotha Brown, 59, is a diabetic with high blood pressure. He's been at
Angola for the past 36 years, serving life for robbing and killing a
bartender.

They were among the prisoners, reform activists and state officials who
testified Tuesday before a Senate committee considering whether the state,
in the midst of its budget crisis, can continue incarcerating elderly and
ill inmates until they die.

According to the Office of Corrections, the cost of incarcerating prisoners
averages:

- - $11,315 a year for each inmate between the ages of 20 and 36;

- - $15,618 for each inmate between the ages of 50 and 60; and

- - $20,929 a year for each inmate aged 66 or older.

About 355 of Angola's 5,113 prisoners are 50 years old or older.

"We are not the same men we were when the crimes were committed," Leotha
Brown told the Senate Judiciary B Committee during the daylong hearing at
Angola.

Louisiana lifers convicted of first- and second-degree murder are not
eligible for parole. There are 3,414 lifers in the corrections system.

"The life sentences are actually death sentences," Lamont Matthews, 51,
told the committee.

Matthews, president of the Angola Lifers Association, is serving the 10th
year of his life sentence for second-degree murder.

"There is no hope here," Matthews said. "A lot of the incidents that arise
here are out of desperation."

The prisoners urged the legislators to consider allowing all lifers the
right to petition for parole once they reach the age of 45 or have served
20 years of their sentences.

It was a plea endorsed by Angola Warden Burl Cain.

"I just feel a person should have a hearing," Cain said. "Just give him a
shot. It doesn't mean it has to go through. Just hear him."

Al Shapiro, an attorney representing the Louisiana affiliate of the
American Civil Liberties Union, said their national research indicates only
15 percent of former inmates aged 40 to 54 will return to prison.

That recidivism rate falls to less than 5 percent for former inmates older
than 55, he said.

Shapiro, who served five years as an assistant district attorney in Rapides
Parish in the 1970s, also urged reforming the parole process.

"It is virtually impossible with this system, with the Parole Board you
have and the governor you have, for a lifer to get out of prison," Shapiro
said.

The state Parole Board denied 34 percent of its applications in 1995. The
denial rate jumped to 60 percent in 1998 and is running 73 percent this
year, state officials said.

Parole Board Vice President Peggy Landry defended the record. "I am fair. I
look at every person that comes before me like they would be my brother or
my sister."

J. Floyd Johnson, an assistant district attorney in Lafayette Parish, said
he is not opposed to reducing sentences or liberalizing parole eligibility
"if we can be reassured that they have, in fact, changed and been
rehabilitated."

Johnson also suggested:

- - Setting annual quotas for parole approvals and then requiring the Parole
Board to explain in writing when it doesn't meet the quotas;

- - Researching the racial and income disparities in sentencing; and

- - Prohibiting the appointment of inexperienced indigent defender attorneys
in serious criminal cases.

Johnson said the committee's search for leniency in sentencing is not an
easy task.

"One of the problems we have in doing what you want is it's not politically
correct, even if it's morally correct," he said. "Being strong on concern
does not mean you're soft on crime."

Katherine Martin, executive director of The O'Brien House, a Baton Rouge
halfway house for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, encouraged the
committee.

"There is a growing group of people who believes something needs to be
changed," she said.

Reforming parole eligibility was one of the ideas floated Tuesday to rein
in the state's burgeoning prison population.

Other ideas included expanding education and rehabilitation programs, drug
courts and beefing up parole and probation staff.

Corrections Secretary Richard Stalder said the reforms will be ineffective
until the state addresses the serious problem of attracting and retaining
qualified corrections officers, who currently are the lowest paid in the
nation.

Stalder said he needs an additional $14 million a year to increase salaries
and to add another 140 parole and probation positions.

"We think that will get us to a level to give us a chance to turn this
thing around," he said.