Smart on crime

Important state reforms earn bipartisan support

Pennsylvania’s justice system is a behemoth that touches various state agencies and courts, all 67 counties, countless municipal police departments and dozens of victims’ rights and civil rights organizations.

Making the system fairer, more fiscally responsible and more effective is no easy task, but the Senate took important steps last week by unanimously passing bills aimed at releasing nonviolent offenders more quickly, getting prisoners into substance abuse treatment more readily and providing more support for probation and parole programs that keep offenders on the straight and narrow once they return home.

The bills are worthy of note not only because of the improvements they portend but also because of the bipartisanship behind them. For a trio of bills to receive the support of every Democrat and Republican in the Senate is remarkable in this era of gridlock. The bills were sponsored by Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, and hailed by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Gov. Tom Wolf, both Democrats. The House should pass them promptly.

The bills mark the second phase of the state’s Justice Reinvestment Initiative, which is designed partly to funnel to other programs some of the money now spent operating prisons. Pennsylvania is said to have the highest incarceration rate in the Northeast. By more often releasing nonviolent offenders once they serve their minimum sentences, the state anticipates saving tens of millions of dollars annually. At least some of the money will go to supporting resource-strapped probation and parole programs that oversee about 72 percent of the criminal population. Theoretically, if probation and parole offices do a better job of helping offenders readjust to society, reincarceration and recidivism rates will drop.

The ideas behind the bills came from a Justice Reinvestment Working Group, which began meeting in 2016, when Mr. Shapiro, the chairman, was leading the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. But even if the House passes all three of the bills, the Legislature’s work is not done. The working group recommended various other improvements, such as providing greater guidance to judges and district judges on pre-trial matters such as bail and use of risk assessment tools.

Fair and uniform application of monetary bail is an issue that needs attention for civil rights reasons; the Post-Gazette’s Kate Giammarise and Christopher Huffaker have reported on another issue, the need for judges to be better educated on how to handle indigent defendants. They’ve reported that jurists regularly jail defendants who fail to pay because they cannot afford to, even though incarceration in such circumstances is against the law.

Sen. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Jefferson Hills, has introduced legislation that would require judges to undergo instruction on handling cases involving indigent defendants, while Mr. Greenleaf has sponsored a bill that defines financial hardship, requires hearings on defendants’ failure to pay fines and costs, and authorizes community service as an alternative punishment for indigent offenders.

These bills should be promptly passed by both chambers, because they too would help to keep more people out of costly confinement.