Prison system, law must deal with repeat offenders

The habitual-felon statute is under attack again in the legislature. The statute allows prosecutors to increase the punishment for felons who commit their fourth felony. Legislators complain that habitual felons take up too many prison beds. District attorneys think otherwise. I believe there is a solution.

While our statewide population has grown by 2.2 million people since 1994, our prison system has not kept pace. North Carolina has the fewest prison beds per capita in the South. Our efficiency ratio is two inmates per guard; the national ratio is 2.7 inmates per corrections employee. We could have 14,350 free prison beds if we were as efficient as the average state prison system. We also need to build 820 new prison beds a year just to keep up with population growth.

Some legislative proposals would almost eliminate drug and other non-violent felonies from being used to habitualize career criminals. ("Habitualize" is the legal process of declaring criminals to be habitual felons.) That would take away from prosecutors their discretion to keep professional criminals off the streets for extra-long sentences when we are lucky enough to catch them committing a non-violent felony (instead of their usual more serious crimes). Our office habitualized a notorious drug dealer for the felony of leaving the scene of an accident, a nonviolent crime. We also habitualized the same driver's brother in a different case. Together they had 279 police contacts; 24 felony, 21 misdemeanor and two involuntary manslaughter convictions, most connected with selling cocaine. One of them was recently released from prison after serving 11 years as a habitual felon. Guess what he is allegedly doing again?

Other repeat felons never commit a violent offense, just a lot of property crimes. Patrick Burris was killed by Gaston County police on July 6 while committing a break-in. During a spree of three other break-ins, he killed five people in Gaffney, S.C. Burris was habitualized based on three other prior property felonies in Reidsville in October 2001 from another series of break-ins. He just got out of prison from a 121-month habitual sentence. Under proposed legislation, Burris would never have been found to be a habitual offender.

Some rural legislators don't understand why the habitual-felon statute is essential to public safety. Rural Jackson County (which doesn't have much crime, it only sent two habitual felons to prison last year) only had 366 cases of breaking and entering in 2007, compared to Forsyth County's 5,395. Forsyth only has the court capacity to habitualize one out of every three repetitive criminals that have committed their fourth or more felony, so we came up with ways to ration the process.

In 2008, out of 2,433 criminals Forsyth put on probation or in prison, Forsyth only habitualized 98 felons. They had a total of: (a) 928 felony convictions; (b) 903 misdemeanor convictions; and, (c) 4,249 arrests. That is an average of over nine felony convictions, nine misdemeanor convictions and 43 arrests each. That is three times the number of prior felonies necessary to habitualize a felon.

Many of these defendants had been declared a habitual offender before; some had even taken a life before. Their files were marked "incorrigible" by my staff. We even notify all three-time felons in open court that the fourth time they get arrested for a felony, they could be found to be habitual offenders. One felon was so advised at 2 p.m. when he received probation for his third felony of breaking and entering. At 2 a.m. the next morning, he was arrested while trying to chop a hole in a pharmacy roof. We indicted him as a habitual felon. It increased his punishment from 8 to 10 months to 93 to 116 months.

In 1994, Winston-Salem was one of the most crime-ridden cities in the United States for violent and property crime. Winston-Salem was ranked 12th nationally, worse than Charlotte, Baltimore, Detroit or Washington. We started our habitual-felon program. By 2007, Winston-Salem had become safer and its city rank had improved to 117th. According to city crime rankings, Charlotte went the other way, from 50th to 28th, no doubt due to the legendary lack of capacity of Charlotte's court system to habitualize more career criminals. Fortunately for Winston-Salem, our court system is adequate to allow us to go after enough habitual felons to reduce our violent-crime rate.

The legislature should listen to Gov. Bev Perdue and close our small, inefficient prisons. We also need to build new prisons so that we have a place to keep habitual felons and increase the punishment for breaking and entering. In the interim, prosecutors should use their discretion to come up with policies to make sure they only habitualize the worst of the worst repeat criminals so we don't run out of places to put them.

■ Tom Keith is the Forsyth County district attorney.