The state will have to release 20 inmates serving life sentences for violent crimes because of a some changes over the last 30 years to the sentencing laws.

Altering the way the state punishes crime is the natural result of the fact that the theory behind why people have to go to prison has changed, said Jim Drennan, a professor of public law and government at the UNC School of Government.

Throughout the 1970s, the law judges handed out relatively long sentences with the idea that offenders would likely be paroled long before the sentence expired. The idea, Drennan said, was that an offender would improve him or herself and convince a parole panel that he or she was ready for release.

Halfway through the decade, the legislature enacted a law that defined a "life sentence" as 80 years. This law would later help the 20 inmates win release.

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Gov. Mike Easley blamed sentencing laws for problems with the state's probation system.

In an interview, Easley said the principal flaw in the probation system is that sentencing laws allow too many people to avoid prison.

"The current system puts people on probation who shouldn't be on probation," he said. "Until those people are put behind bars, this is going to continue."

The N&O reported that during some years correction officials had not asked for extra people and not made an issue of vacancies. In 2005, the probation division asked for 135 new officers, but the secretary of correction, in consultation with Easley's budget officials, killed that request.

Easley said that when the legislature is asked for funding, the money doesn't come through for months. 

Susan Katzenelson, executive director of the N.C. Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission, said she was not aware of any Easley administration initiative to toughen sentencing laws. (N&O)

Correction Secretary Theodis Beck fired back at the legislature.

In a letter to the editor printed over the weekend in the N&O, the longtime secretary argued that the recent series on problems with probation missed some details, including the effects of a Structured Sentencing law from the 1990s.

He also argues that the General Assembly has not given the department enough in the annual budget:

While the legislature has spent hundreds of millions on new prison construction, funding for community corrections has not kept pace. Since 1997, the General Assembly has chosen not to fund more than $130 million in additional corrections budget requests recommended by governors, which included more than 160 additional probation jobs. Further, the Department of Correction’s budget, as enacted by the legislature, has been balanced by using money from unfilled jobs for more than a decade.

After the series ran, Senate leader Marc Basnight said the department had a "rotten performance."