Solicitor: South Carolina max-out system dangerous
Fourteenth Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone wants state law changed so that all offenders serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. But Jon Ozmint, the former director of the S.C. Department of Corrections, said the change would make everyone less safe. | Josh Mitelman/Staff
Releasing S.C. prisoners before they complete their sentences is costing lives, said 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone.
Khalil Singleton | Submitted
His case in point: Khalil Singleton, 8, who was shot to death Sept. 1, 2012, while playing in his grandmother's Hilton Head Island yard by Tyrone Robinson, a longtime criminal with a rap sheet dating back to 1995.
Robinson should have still been in prison on that date, serving a 13-year sentence for leading police on a high-speed chase through Old Town Bluffton in a stolen car and resisting arrest in 2002, Stone said. Instead, Robinson was released after serving a little over half his sentence because he earned education credits and worked as a wardkeeper, a groundskeeper and other jobs while in prison.
"Khalil Singleton would still be alive today if we had truth in sentencing in this state," Stone said. "Tyrone Robinson should have still been in prison. Sentences should mean what they say."
Tyrone Robinson addresses Khalil Singleton's family before his sentencing on the fifth day of his trial on the afternoon of Sept. 19, 2014, at the Beaufort County Courthouse. Robinson was found guilty of murder. | Delayna Earley/Staff
Nationally, South Carolina allows more offenders to max out their prison sentences than most other states, according to a 2014 report by the Pew Charitable Trust's Public Safety Performance Project. Just five states -- Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Maine and Florida -- released a higher percentage of offenders than South Carolina's 44 percent.
Max-out means offenders reduce their prison time by earning credits for education, work and good behavior. They don't face any supervision after they are released.
While mostly nonviolent offenders are eligible for maxing out in South Carolina, it's still a dangerous practice, Stone contends, because offenders don't just specialize in violent or nonviolent crimes. "Just look at Tyrone Robinson. They don't make those distinctions," he said.
Jon Ozmint, the immediate past director of the S.C. Department of Corrections who now works as a lawyer and consultant, disagrees with Stone's assessment. For starters, unknown variables make it impossible to predict whether Khalil's shooting death -- a violent crime that has since sent Robinson to prison for life -- would have occurred.
Additionally, the state's max-out system is necessary, said Ozmint and others, because it entices offenders to behave while they're behind bars, protects prison guards and saves taxpayers' money.
"There has to be incentives for good behavior. They make it safer for your employees inside the prisons and safer for the communities around the prisons," Ozmint said. "If you take away all hope from men, then they will act like men with no hope."
Research shows that offenders who participate in prison work and education programs have a lower rate of becoming repeat offenders, said Ozmint.
In 2012, nearly 25 percent of the more than 11,000 inmates released from S.C. prisons committed new crimes within three years, according to data from the S.C. Department of Corrections. Of those who were involved in work or education programs, the recidivism rate dropped, ranging from 15 percent to nearly 23 percent.
MONEY MATTERS
Money concerns also explain why South Carolina allows maxing out of sentences.
Conservative S.C. taxpayers aren't willing to pay more in taxes to build prisons, said Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, who headed the state legislature's sentencing reform effort five years ago.
In 2010, lawmakers were confronted with an exploding offender population and a multi-million-dollar need for more prisons. So, like their counterparts in many other states, they explored ways to reduce the nonviolent prison population and reduce recidivism.
"We knew we had to do something," Malloy said. "The war on drugs just did not work, and it had filled our prisons."
Nonviolent prisoners were causing the glut, according to a legislative review. Nearly half of those behind bars were being held for nonviolent crimes -- 20 percent for drug-related offenses and another 24 percent for breaking the rules of their release, such as failing a drug test.
Sentencing reform sought to clear those offenders out by making better use of community-based alternatives such as drug courts and restitution.
The result of lawmakers' work: lighter sentences for dozens of charges. Now, S.C. offenders who break into commercial buildings during the day are eligible for parole. So are those convicted of a first- or second-degree drug offense (with the exception of drug trafficking).
The reform was paired with "get tough" changes for violent offenders. Now, major assaults, rapes and other crimes that carry sentences up to 20 years are ineligible for parole, and offenders must serve at least 85 percent of their sentence before maxing out.
The reforms appear to have been effective in decreasing the prison population. Since 2010, it has dropped by 13 percent from nearly 24,000 prisoners to about 21,000, according to the S.C. Department of Corrections. The state has shuttered three of its minimum security prisons in response.
"(Sentencing reform) has been such a big success," Malloy said.
But sentencing reform gets just part of the credit for the drop, Ozmint acknowledges. South Carolina and all other states are enjoying a decades-long reduction in crime. Researchers are still debating the reasons why, with theories ranging from an aging population to improved police tactics.
PLANS TO TRY AGAIN
The 2010 reforms didn't stop the fighting at the Statehouse over who should get to max out their sentences or be paroled.
In 2013, Sen. Greg Hembree, R-Horry, a former 15th Circuit solicitor, tried to ban the option of parole for any crime that carried a sentence of more than a year. Stone and the S.C. Solicitors Association backed the bill.
But it went nowhere.
"The lawyers in the legislature are mostly criminal defense lawyers and trial lawyers," Hembree said. "And I'm in that group too, but I'm a prosecutor at heart. I think some of those (lawmakers) are making decisions that are best for their clients. They see their clients as their constituents in some ways."
Hembree said he plans to try again soon to pass legislation that would require all offenders to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, chairman of the Senate's powerful Judiciary Committee, wants to pursue similar legislation.
"It would create a system so that when you walk out of the courtroom, you know exactly what the sentence is. And there will be no hit or miss in front of a panel of the parole board and no public outcry if a person is released early. That would be the fairest system we could have," said Martin, who in 2013 was incensed that former HomeGold chairman Jack Sterling was granted parole less than a year after he began serving a five-year prison sentence. Sterling was convicted of securities fraud after costing about 12,000 investors an estimated $278 million.
But such an overhaul will not only be cumbersome but politically complicated, because dozens of sentences would need to be recalibrated, Martin said. That means many offenses would suddenly carry shorter prison terms.
"So at least on paper, lawmakers would be perceived as being soft on crime, as handing out sentences for less time than they now require," he said. "That's going to cause some (lawmakers) heartburn."
The full project
One of Beaufort County’s most notorious sex offenders was released from prison Friday and sent straight to the Beaufort County jail after serving a little more than half of his 25-year sentence. | READ
The state's Sexually Violent Treatment Program has become a lightning rod for critics concerned that sex offenders such as Philip Underwood-Sheppard are being punished twice. Defenders say it provides treatment for the state's mentally ill sex predators and protects society. | READ
The program involves civil commitment of sex offenders and is a way to keep them locked up after their criminal sentences have ended. | READ
Critics of South Carolina's max-out system, which allows offenders to be released if they earn education and work credits, say the program is dangerous. | READ
Follow editor Gina Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/GinaNSmith.
This story was originally published August 27, 2015, 6:20 PM.
