FRANKFORT — No one has studied Kentucky’s growing inmate population more or knows more about Kentucky’s criminal code than Robert Lawson.

“I wrote most of the 1974 penal code,” Lawson told a committee looking at ways to improve the code and reduce prison costs and populations. “I know every line in it.”

The University of Kentucky law professor has published several articles about the growing problem of jails and also taught many of the state’s prosecutors and judges. But that doesn’t mean they agree with Lawson that we imprison too many people for non-serious offenses. Fayette County Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Larson certainly doesn’t.

Since 1970, Kentucky’s inmate population has grown from 3,000 to 21,700 and its corrections budget from $7 million to $400 million. Meanwhile, county jails now house 7,500 of those state inmates, down from a high of 8,000 at the first of the year. It’s breaking the bank – siphoning off money for roads, schools, health care and local recreation parks.

Gov. Steve Beshear wants the Criminal Justice Council to come up with recommendations on how to deal with the problem by Dec. 1. One of the council’s subcommittees is looking at sentencing and invited Lawson Wednesday to share findings of his research.

Lawson thinks Kentucky is “addicted to incarceration” and its persistent felony offender laws should be amended to reduce the flow of inmates and provide “proportionality” between crime and sentence. When the law was first enacted, it required those charged as persistent felons to have committed two prior serious felonies and to have served time in prison for those offenses. But over the years, lawmakers made all felonies, regardless of the seriousness of the offense, “triggers” for PFO enhancement and dropped the requirement for prior prison time.

“The law was written originally for people with long records who had had plenty of time to change,” Lawson told the committee. “You now have a PFO statute that becomes a routine part of sentencing.” He said it has effectively transferred power from judges to prosecutors who use the hammer of a PFO conviction to wrest guilty pleas from defendants. Lawson said less than 4 percent of defendants now go to trial, although Larson, the commonwealth's attorney, said that’s because “these people were obviously guilty.”

Lawson said again reforming the criminal code will be difficult and will take time. But there is an opportunity for “selective reform,” revising PFO and drug enhancement penalty statutes to reduce the number of inmates. Kentucky leads the nation in the rate of increase in prisoners, according to the Pew Center on the States, and the nation imprisons more of its population than any other country on earth.

“The inmate flow is huge and until you get some significant reform (of sentencing), the inmate flow will still be there,” Lawson said.

Larson, the Fayette County commonwealth's attorney, said public safety should be the first priority.

“These are precisely the people our public wants incarcerated,” he said. “When they are on the street, they commit crime after crime. When they are in prison they don’t.”

Lawson’s latest study reviewed cases in Fayette County where the PFO law was applied. In most, defendants were charged with non-violent crimes such as cold checks, theft, and driving alcohol offenses but often received sentences of 10 years because they were charged with PFO offenses.

Larson countered those defendants had an average of 14 prior convictions. But most of those were misdemeanors, crimes which in the original PFO law couldn’t trigger the PFO charge. Lawson said that is the case today in most states – but not in Kentucky.

In one instance, an inmate absconded from a work release program at the county jail and wasn’t picked up for 46 days. It was one escape, one crime, Lawson said. But he was charged with 46 counts of escape – one for each day.

Lawson told of two women giving birth in county jails in Kentucky. One was serving time for non-payment of a misdemeanor fine.

“That tells me there is something wrong with us,” Lawson said. “I would like for any prosecutor to defend that.”

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Services and is based in Frankfort. He can be reached by e-mail at rellis@cnhi.com.