"Arizona mandatory-sentencing laws targeted"

The title of this post is the headline of this article about a debate over budget-driven sentencing reform talk among legislators in Arizona.  Here are excerpts:

A GOP lawmaker on Wednesday vowed to propose legislation next year that would give Arizona judges more discretion when sentencing criminals, but another promised to block it.

Rep. Cecil Ash, R-Mesa, who chairs a state legislative committee studying prison sentencing, said the bill would seek to loosen mandatory-sentencing laws, provide more just punishment and save Arizona money.  Mandatory-sentencing laws adopted in the 1990s in Arizona and across the nation have "tied the hands of judges" and left Arizonans paying millions of dollars to imprison non-violent criminals, he said....

Growth in the inmate population has made the state's prison system Arizona's third-largest expense behind education and health care, Ash said.  According to a Department of Corrections analysis, Arizona's prison population is roughly 10 times bigger than it was 30 years ago.

Ash said Arizona had surpassed many states' incarceration rates. "With a population of roughly 6.5 million, we have over 40,000 inmates," Ash said. "The state of Washington, with a population slightly larger than Arizona, has roughly 18,000."

Ash cited the state's budget crisis as reason for looking for ways to decrease spending in the state's corrections system. "I think we can make some improvements that ensure public safety," he said. "The purpose isn't to let people out of prison early; the purpose is to stop wasting resources."

But fellow GOP lawmaker Sen. Ron Gould, the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that Ash's bill would "never see the light of day."  Gould heads the committee that the bill would likely be assigned to.

"Just because he's a member of my party . . . it's not getting my support," Gould said. "It's beyond a money issue.  It's a principal issue.  I think I have the support of 21 (Senate) Republicans who are not going to allow (for) letting criminals out early."

The attitudes and rhetoric used by state Senator Gould here presents the critical impediment to cost-effective sentencing reforms. I remain hopeful that tea-party types will generally not tolerate politicians placing off-limits entirely cuts in the third-biggest government expense, but this article again highlights the reality that many readily assert that fiscally conservative cuts should not be made to any big government criminal justice expenditures.