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			    GENERAL-RKBA Digest 338
Topics covered in this issue include:
1) CRIMESTRIKE: Tourist Advisory: UT, AK by NRA Alerts 
2) FAXALERT: New Attacks on Civilian Marksmanship Program by NRA Alerts
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Topic No. 1
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:17:01 -0500 (EST)
From: NRA Alerts 
To: general-rkba-real.nra
Subject: CRIMESTRIKE: Tourist Advisory: UT, AK
Message-ID: 
                        NRA CrimeStrike's
                        CrimeWatch Weekly
 
            Breaking news on critical crime-fighting 
                 issues, policies and legislation
Vol. 4, No.  7                                      February 17, 1998
                     Tourist Advisory: UT, AK
     Utah prison authorities were hauling out canvas cots as the
state's prison population crisis worsened.  Thus far, 274 inmates
have been released under an emergency program in an effort to
find room for new inmates.
     Utah Corrections, Parole, and Pardon officials told
legislators earlier this month that more inmates will have to be
released to house new offenders.
     Yet,  Legislators are giving a chilly reception to a
corrections department request for additional funds, including
money for construction of a $14 million, 288-bed addition to the
Central Utah Correction Facility in Gunnison.
     Utah has nearly 5,000 inmates against a prison capacity of
just over 4,000. "This puts our backs to the wall," said
Corrections Director Pete Haun as legislative fiscal analysts
carved down his budget request last week.
      Meanwhile, Alaskan correctional authorities are considering
sending more inmates out of state to meet a recent court order by 
Superior Court Judge Karen Hunt.  She directed that the state
trim its emergency prison capacity to 2,691 inmates, or 500
fewer than the system  now houses. 
     According to press reports, the state has regularly exceeded
the capacities established in a 1980s conditions of confinement
suit.  State authorities are considering tents or the conversion
of an Army post near Delta Junction into a private prison.  The
state already has 273 inmates in a private prison in Arizona. 
                    New Study Of Urban Felons
     An estimated 38% of felony defendants had at least one prior
felony conviction and 13% a prior violent felony conviction,
according to a new Bureau of Justice Statistics report, "Felony
Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 1994."  Three in eight
defendants had an active criminal justice status, (probation,
parole, pretrial release, etc.)  
     Out of the 62% of defendants on pretrial release, a third
committed misconduct that resulted in the revocation of their
release, the BJS report says.  Twenty-four percent of those on
pretrial release failed to appear in court on schedule, and 15%
were rearrested for a new offense.
     Overall, 61% of defendants were convicted of a felony, 11% a
misdemeanor.  Fully 92% of convictions during the one-year study
were obtained through guilty pleas.  Of those who went to trial,
about four of five were found guilty.  About 36% of all felony
convictions went to prison, with 100% of murderers (about half
for life), 70% of robbers and 69% of convicted rapists also
receiving prison sentences.
     BJS said the mean (average) sentence for those convicted of
a violent felony was about nine years, with the median (middle)
about six years.
                 Bathroom Molester Striking Out?
     California's three-strikes law may finally sideline for good
a sex offender with a history of assaults in public women's
bathrooms.  Eric Van Owens, 30, could get 25 years to life for
burglary under California's "Three Strikes" law after being
arrested in a women's room at Southwestern College, Chula Vista,
Calif.
     Owens served nine years in prison for a series of bathroom
assaults, several at California State University, Long Beach. 
Along the way, he racked up eight felony convictions, according
to an Associated Press account
     Campus police arrested Owens last July after a woman found
him in a bathroom at the Chula Vista campus.  This time
prosecutors are looking to throw the "three strikes" book at him
and have gotten his bond raised to $200,000.
    Federal Courts End 27-Year Reign Over Mississippi Prisons
     A lawsuit that kept Mississippi prisons operating under a
federal court order for 27 years ended early this month, with
both sides saying the state's correctional system had made a
remarkable turnaround during that period.
      Mississippi has spent between $60 and $70 million building
7,500 new cells in the last four years.  Two new regional prisons
and three contracted private prisons have been added to the
state's resources, though 1,200 state inmates remain in county
jails.
                   Robber Sues For $2 Million 
     A teenager who pleaded guilty to the armed robbery of a
Rochester restaurant last August is seeking $2 million in
damages from the city for wounds he received in a shootout with
police, reports Associated Press.
     Andre Garfield, 18, was wounded in both arms after he and
three other teen robbers were confronted by two police and the
armed restaurant owner as they fled the holdup at Kim Ching
restaurant. 
     It was unclear who wounded Garfield, but he claims police
knew it "wasn't right" to shoot at him.  Garfield could get 12«
to 25 years in prison when sentenced Feb. 20. Though armed, 
Garfield claims he didn't shoot during the incident that also
left the restaurant owner and two other teen robbers with gunshot
wounds.
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Topic No. 2
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:17:25 -0500 (EST)
From: NRA Alerts 
To: general-rkba-real.nra
Subject: FAXALERT: New Attacks on Civilian Marksmanship Program
Message-ID: 
                        NRA-ILA FAX ALERT
          
           11250 Waples Mill Road * Fairfax, VA  22030
 * Phone: 1-800-392-8683 * Fax: 703-267-3918 * GROOTS@NRA.org  
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