COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - State Attorney General Henry McMaster is pushing legislators to get rid of parole for South Carolina criminals.McMaster began a two-day trip around the state on Tuesday morning to announce his effort to abolish parole in the state. McMaster first visited North Charleston, and then traveled to Columbia and Greenville. A stop in Horry County was planned for Wednesday. McMaster says abolishing parole for all crimes will help people feel safer by giving them confidence that criminals will stay behind bars until they've completed their sentences.McMaster, long an advocate of abolishing parole, has been studying the possibility of accomplishing that goal for the state's crime victims for over two years. During that time, he has consulted with judges, victim advocates, legislators, state prison officials and officials from the state of Virginia, where the change has produced results.The United States Congress eliminated parole for inmates beginning in 1987, and Virginia did the same in 1994. In Virginia, the result has been an overall reduction in that state's prison population growth. Between 1985 and 1995, Virginia's prison population increased by 154 percent. Between 1995 and 2004, however, the prison population grew by only 31 percent.McMaster explained that the public's confidence in the judicial system is damaged unnecessarily when a judge imposes a sentence on a convicted person, only to have that same convict eligible for release a short time later - after serving as little as 25 percent of their sentence."The public must have confidence in the criminal justice system, and that confidence is steadily eroded by parole," said McMaster in a written news release. "Abolishing parole would return a judge's power to impose a true and meaningful sentence, and the victims of crime and the public would know what that sentence means.""Today, no one really knows how long a convict will actually be behind bars, and that decision is removed from the judge and placed in the hands of a nearly anonymous parole board," McMaster continued.A second effect of abolishing parole would be that appropriate non-violent offenders would likely receive fewer jail sentences, and would instead receive alternative sentences that would focus on education and job training, a model McMaster has described as a "Middle Court." Currently, a number of counties already divert these kinds of offenders to similar programs through "Drug Courts." A second law would be needed to create this program for the entire state once parole has been abolished.The No Parole bill will be pre-filed in the House by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Harrison (Richland), and in the Senate by Senator Larry Martin (Pickens). But the Director of the state Department of Corrections says he'd support a bill -- but only if the state legislature would be willing to pay for all the new measures."Even under our current truth in sentencing and no parole laws, we need to increase funding to the Department of Corrections or implement changes to our sentencing structure, this year," said Corrections Director Jon Ozmint. "We have a long history of under-funding corrections and we have experienced court-ordered releases in the past. We must be careful not to pass laws with no willingness to pay for the costs of those laws."Ozmint said the state should only adopt new laws if there is a corresponding willingness to pay for the laws.

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