Attorney general candidates make crime, prisons a key issue

Democrat Jennifer Granholm and Republican John Smietanka have looked citizens straight in the eyes and said they will not let criminals onto Michigan's streets.

And both state attorney general candidates have put their money where there mouths are.

During her four years as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Michigan, Granholm attained a 98-percent conviction rate. A Harvard Law School graduate, Granholm now serves as Wayne County's corporation counsel.

"I do what (Michigan Attorney General) Frank Kelley does for the state in the largest county in the state," Granholm said. "I oversee a $9.5 million budget and 75 employees."

Smietanka has served as a county prosecuting attorney and as the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, and his accomplishments include winning a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

During the past seven years, Michigan's crime rate has decreased 25 percent. Smietanka and Granholm said they will continue efforts to be tough on violent criminals.

Gov. John Engler said he in part attributes the decrease in crime to his efforts to keep more prisoners behind bars.

"What we've done is fight to regain Michigan's prisons," Engler said. To cheaply increase prison space, "we're double bunking almost every prisoner today."

The governor and both attorney general candidates said a package of truth-in-sentencing bills, which was passed during Engler's tenure as governor, will push Michigan's crime rate even lower.

Spearheaded by Engler, truth in sentencing guarantees criminals will serve at least the minimum amount of days in prison to which they were sentenced. The policy will be instituted by next January.

"I spent a lot of time ... trying to explain to people how a person sentenced to five to 15 years (can be out) of prison in 30 days." Smietanka said.

The old guidelines lower citizen "support of the system and creates a belief among hardened criminals that the system doesn't enforce the laws on the books," Smietanka added. "We now have guidelines so the same offender should get the same sentence across the state."

Kelley is retiring this term after 37 years in office, and the candidates agree Kelley's office - comprised of 40 separate divisions - should be streamlined.

Smietanka has a three-part plan for change, focusing on "reorganizing the office along a public service line."

"The crime division, in charge of gangs, organized crime ... has only seven to nine people assigned to it," Smietanka said. "For a state of 9.2 million people that doesn't cut it. The first thing I'd do is double the size of the crime division."

Smietanka's plan also includes using public relations skills as a criterion for hiring the office's attorneys and creating a series of task forces to deal with several types of crime, including gang-related street, organized and computer crime.

Granholm said she also would increase the size of the attorney general's crime division and said the entire office must become more technologically savy.

"With the advent of the Internet there is an enormous potential for wrongdoing," Granholm said. "You need to make sure children aren't lured into chat rooms.

"You also see the theft of the identity of people, with some criminals (stealing) credit card numbers," she said.

Although both candidates have similar plans to transform the attorney general's office, the differences between the candidates are pronounced.

Granholm is pro-choice, while Smietanka is pro-life. He favors a bill to make it mandatory to give a concealed weapon permit to anyone who doesn't have a criminal record. She opposes this measure.

Smietanka supports a proposed bill in the state legislature that would give all Michigan citizens without a criminal record or a history of mental illness access to a concealed weapon permit.

State Rep. Mary Schroer (D-Ann Arbor) urged both attorney general candidates not to lose sight of the prison system's responsibility to reform criminals.

She said a side effect of state officials talking and acting tough on crime has been a reduced effort to rehabilitate prisoners, and especially juvenile convicts.

"Rehabilitation is not happening much at all. We're just giving up," Schroer said. Juveniles "aren't in (prison) for life - they're out when they're 21."

09-30-98