Group urges tougher sex-offender sentences

By Sarah Linn
The Associated Press

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The shoes represent the innocence and vulnerability of children, activists say.

Yesterday, members of the original brigade returned to the Capitol to tout legislation to add three to 10 years to the prison terms of convicted first-time child rapists and molesters.

House Bill 2400, sponsored by Rep. Lois McMahan, R-Olalla, was recently revived after a public outcry led by talk-radio shows.

Backers rallied yesterday to continue the pressure.

"As parents, we have a responsibility to protect our children and keep them safe from harm. This is another way we can do this," said Jeff Hines, who founded an advocacy group after a neighbor's young daughter was raped.

"Crimes against young children are often bargained away or not even tried," said Brigade founder Helen Harlow, whose young son was mutilated by an attacker, touching off a crackdown on sex predators in the late 1980s. "Prison is the answer."

The House measure would impose mandatory minimum sentences on all first-time child-sex offenders. Currently, there's a range of possible sentences.

For instance, a first-time offender who commits first-degree child rape currently faces 7-3/4 to 10-1/4 years in prison. Under McMahan's bill, that convicted offender would serve at least 10 years, said John Sattgast, a House Republican spokesman.

Critics worry that increasing sex offenders' sentences would put more pressure on an already overcrowded, underfunded prison system. The state corrections system is equipped to handle fewer that 15,000 prison inmates but houses 16,300 in its eight institutions.

Gov. Gary Locke has asked lawmakers to approve a $81 million Department of Corrections budget increase to ease overcrowding.
 
"Bills like this add to the fiscal and economic cost, particularly over the long haul," said Dick Van Wagenen, criminal-justice policy adviser for the governor.

If HB 2400 becomes law, it could crowd prisons with 500 additional inmates by 2009 — and about 4,900 more inmates by 2014. That's the equivalent of two Walla Walla state penitentiaries, Van Wagenen said.

Legislative analysis shows the bill would cost $49.2 million for the 2003-2005 biennium. Locke has already requested $45.6 million for the design and site development of his proposed Coyote Ridge prison expansion project near Connell, Franklin County.

McMahan said she's not daunted by her measure's potentially hefty price tag.

"This is good policy, and it's our job to promote good policy," she said. "I don't think it's anything too much to ask."

It wouldn't be the first hurdle McMahan's bill has had to jump.

HB 2400 supposedly died after failing to meet a committee deadline. But after receiving hundreds of phone calls and e-mails generated by House conservatives and "hot talk" radio, Democrats relented and allowed a special Feb. 13 hearing in the House Criminal Justice Committee.

Now the measure sits before the House Appropriations Committee. A scaled-down version is expected to reach the House floor soon.

In the meantime, the Tennis Shoe Brigade plans to collect tennis shoes at Western Washington Safeway stores and present them to House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle.

Bill supporters said the legislative changes are long overdue.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company