The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Bayh's response was understandable in the political atmosphere of the times. ["Understandable" only if you expect governors to be completely self-serving) He had just become governor, at age 33, and clearly carried the presidential ambitions he is still nurturing as a prominent U.S. senator.
He was the first Democrat elected governor in 20 years. Nationally, the older George Bush had just defeated Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis for the presidency. One of the main raps against Dukakis had been that he was soft on crime. He was blamed for the furlough program that freed Massachusetts inmate Willie Horton to commit more crime. Dukakis added to his problems by refusing to meet with Horton's crime victims and his presidential campaign never overcame the soft-on-crime label.
Bayh got the message loud and clear. Never mind the details. Matheney was free on a weekend pass. That was different from work release and prison alternatives, which were aimed at nonviolent offenders. Bayh could see that such technical distinctions wouldn't count for much in a heated debate.
In his own campaign for governor, Bayh had added to his dilemma by implying that Republicans had been soft on crime in the management of the state's work-release programs. He seemed to be trying to run to the right of Republicans, to be tougher on crime just in case anyone might assume he had Dukakis' soft touch.
Yet in a debate with his Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. John Mutz, Bayh showed little familiarity with the state's prisons and criminal justice system. His training would come on the job. He got it fast and furiously when Matheney killed his former wife, Lisa Bianco, after receiving a weekend pass from a state prison in Pendleton.
"Evan just immediately backed off from work release because he didn't want to be blamed for a Willie Horton thing," recalled state Rep. Peggy Welch, D-Bloomington. A probation officer at the time, she had run the Monroe County Community Corrections program.
She looks at the Matheney case as part of a natural swing on the pendulum in criminal justice issues, from being hard on criminals to a recognition of the need for some way of transition for inmates back to society. "How did Matheney play in that?" she asks. "He swung the pendulum to the other side -- put them in jail and throw away the key."
The state may be ready to begin a swing in the other direction. Gov. Mitch Daniels has brought in a new corrections commissioner, David Donohue, who has shown a readiness to renew the work-release concept, on grounds that most inmates won't be locked up forever and need to make the transition to freedom. Donohue also is experimenting with a faith-based wing in a Pendleton prison, based on similar efforts in other states that seem to reduce repeat offenders.
Daniels and Donohue are not going soft on crime. But they are keeping in mind the state constitutional mandate for a criminal justice system that provides reformation instead of vindictive justice.