INDIANAPOLIS —A push to overhaul the way Indiana punishes those who commit crimes large and small will once again dominate many state lawmakers' time this summer.
Since Gov. Mitch Daniels has named sentencing reform among his top priorities for his final year in office, it's likely to be a hot topic. And with county prosecutors still balking, it's likely to be a controversial one, too.
A year after the first stab at sentencing changes failed, two out-of-session legislative study panels are going to try again.
State Sen. Richard Bray, a Martinsville Republican, chairs the Criminal Code Evaluation Commission. His colleague, Republican Sen. Brent Steele of Bedford, is chairing the Criminal Law and Sentencing Policy Study Committee.
Combined, the two are tasked with once again taking an in-depth look at how Indiana sentences prisoners and proposing legislation that has a better chance of passing than the omnibus sentencing overhaul Daniels and others championed last year.
They'll do so, Bray said, by splitting the issues apart and putting them in separate bills to be introduced in the General Assembly's 10-week 2012 legislative session. That's a new approach, and one Bray said he hopes will give at least some pieces better chances of winning passage.
"Last time we put it all in one boat and it sank," he said.
The two panels include many of the same members, and Bray said he and Steele are dividing issues up to avoid overlap.
Right now, Bray said, his panel intends to tackle theft and drug sentences, while Steele's tackles sex-related sentences and could work on drugs, too.
Coming up next week is the easiest part: thefts. Proponents of sentencing law changes want "graduated" sentences that offer greater distinction between major and minor crimes.
"We should distinguish between shoplifting a pack of chewing gum and stealing a Mercedes," Bray said.
That will be the topic in Bray's panel on Wednesday. Steele's had planned to meet Thursday, but that hearing was pushed back by two weeks.
Trickier than thefts will be sex-related sentences.
"The sexual code is probably violated 50,000 times every weekend in the state of Indiana. We're trying to make sure that the people who get the most severe punishments are truly the pedophiles or people preying on others, and not just stupid teenagers," Bray said.
Perhaps the most controversial piece of the sentencing reform puzzle is related to drug crimes.
Daniels, Bray and others have argued that community-based options might better suit those convicted of what are considered low-level drug crimes than incarceration does.
"If you could just get the kingpins, the drug cartel leaders and all of that, I would think life without parole would be a minimum," Bray said.
On the other hand, he said, "maybe 10 years is excessive for a kid who hasn't been in trouble and has done something stupid, or perhaps someone who is an addict trying to sell pot for a little cash. I'm not necessarily agreeing with that person, but maybe they're not the people we should fill our prisons with."
Finding a way to convince a majority of legislators that these arguments have merit, Daniels has argued, is urgent. Indiana's Department of Correction runs prison that are at nearly full capacity, which means without changes to the law, the only options that exist are building new prisons or releasing inmates earlier.
Also important, though, is convincing county prosecutors – and the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, which lobbies for them – that such changes won't amount to a "soft on crime" approach that undermines local efforts.
Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nicholas Hermann has resisted the proposed sentencing overhaul.Hermann said he is particularly concerned by the notion of dropping sentences for drug crimes – especially those involving methamphetamine.
"In Vanderburgh County, we led the state in meth lab seizures last year, and we're on pace to break our record from last year this year," he said.
"If you reduce the penalties, you're going to get more of it. That's what common sense would dictate."
Meth crimes, he said, can be destructive in ways that go well beyond what comes with most drug use.
"I've been in these homes and seen the kids' toys, the baby cradles. It's moved beyond a drug and a drug addiction to, you have someone basically making a bomb in a residential neighborhood," he said.
Another problem with the idea of sentencing reforms, he said, is that the changes envision greater roles for community-based programs.
But state lawmakers have capped Indiana's property taxes, and in the 2008 legislation that capped those taxes, lawmakers shifted costs for child welfare and juvenile detention programs to the state level. That left few options for raising additional revenue to beef those programs up.
"Basically, what they're doing is, they're writing essays about why the state should pay for something, and then they're at a whim about what the state will actually pay for and what it won't," Hermann said.
Bray acknowledged that problem, and said it is tough to find extra money to shift to the county level. "This is a bad time to talk about increasing the budget," he said.
What would help the most, Hermann said, is including in sentencing-related legislation guarantees that those convicted of the highest-level crimes would serve greater percentages of their sentences.
Right now, Indiana offers one day worth of credit for each day served, effectively halving most prison sentences. The state also offers inmates ways to chip into their sentences, such as education while they are in prison.
"If there's an effort to punish those people that are the worst of the worst, I think you're going to see the prosecutors give more on other parts of the spectrum," he said. "That goes a long way."
Last year, an amendment would have required those convicted of crimes such as murder to serve 85 percent of their sentences.
That notion, though, is anathema to those like Bray, who say locking inmates up for longer undermines the goal of reducing prison crowding and therefore avoiding the costs of building new space.
"That is something they're asking for," he said, "that is beyond unreasonable, in my estimation."