26 years for 3 hours:enough punishment?

EAST GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - The 17-year-old East Grand Rapids High School girls stopped to use the pay phone inside a drug store in Gaslight Village.

Valentine's Day, 1984 -- 8:30 p.m.

When they returned to their bright yellow Chevrolet Citation, a man jumped up from the back seat with a loaded handgun.

The stranger said he hadn't used the gun in a while, spun the .32-caliber chamber.

He nervously cracked his knuckles, even sang, forced them to drive to an industrial area in Grand Rapids.

For three hours, the girls did what they had to do to survive -- three hours that have lasted a lifetime.

Kirk Douglas Anderson, then 18 -- a year older than his victims -- was convicted of kidnapping, robbing and sexually assaulting the girls, and for doing the same to a Grand Rapids woman just before that.

A Kent County judge sentenced him in 1984 to 20 to 60 years in prison, plus 2 years for the gun.

Former East Grand Rapids Police Chief Peter Gallagher figures he was a serial rapist in the making.

"This guy, he committed these two rapes that night, he committed a rape the month before, and the day he was caught, there is no doubt in my mind he wasn't going to commit another rape that night," Gallagher told Target 8.

Twenty-six years later, Anderson is living on Grand Rapids' southeast side -- paroled in January, on the sex offender registry.

He is 44 -- lived more than half his life locked up -- and told Target 8 he has changed.

The girls are now 43 -- and afraid -- too afraid to talk about it, fearing he will come looking for them, wondering whether he has truly changed.

And, that sets up the conflict:

As the state accelerates paroles to empty prison beds and save money, is it risking public safety?

It costs $32,000 a year to house a prisoner.

"I'm afraid that under a process -- in an attempt to empty our prisons, we're exposing our public to considerably greater danger, and that's what's happening," said former state Sen. William VanRegenmorter, author of the 1985 William VanRegenmorter Crime Victims' Rights Act.

"Paroles are up, the definitions of violent criminals seems to be changing."

Two parole board members -- one from Ionia, the other from the Detroit area -- approved Anderson's release last fall.

That, despite 63 prison misconduct reports, including fights and weapons, though most occurred during his first few years in custody, according to documents obtained by Target 8 under the Freedom of Information Act.

His last serious prison offense -- taping a razor blade under his TV tray -- was in 2006.

He left prison Jan. 10, 2010.

Gallagher, the police chief when this happened, expected Anderson in prison for at least a few more years.

"With a gun? Kidnaps? Robs? Rapes? Multiple offenses? Yeah, it would have been longer," Gallagher said.

Gallagher said he wasn't aware of the release until he received a call from Target 8.

"I thought he was going to be in for much longer, so I was taken aback," he said.

Michigan prisoners on average serve 127% of their minimum sentences, more than other Midwestern states, contributing to a $2 billion a year prison budget.

Anderson served about 120% of his minimum.

A decade ago, the parole board approved less than half the parole requests. Now, it says "yes" to nearly two-thirds.

That already has helped cut the prisoner count by 6,400 in three years -- the second biggest drop in the country, behind California.

While prosecutors around Detroit have objected to accelerated paroles, Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth says he doesn't have the staff to even track them.

"As a practical matter, as careful as they may be in trying to screen whoever they're going to let out, somebody who they let out is going to do something awful," Forsyth said.

VanRegenmorter says the state is going the wrong way, "if you know that a lot of dangerous people are going to prison and if you know that they're letting out more dangerous people every day, and that the issue is money. We're talking about money and that's all."

In its push to empty prison beds, the state released more than 13,500 prisoners on parole last year -- the most ever -- a jump of 17% over the year before.

The state released 950 of those to Kent County, a 14% jump over 2008, with increases of 20% in Kalamazoo County and 11% in Ottawa.

"You're dealing with people who are not the most reliable people in the world," Forsyth said. "A lot of them are dangerous, and you're playing Russian rouelette with them."

For the first time, at Target 8's request, the state released a snapshot of those paroled: ( View a Word document table of the statistics)

Statewide, 7,600 of the parolees released last year were in for violent crimes -- about 56% of the total paroled. That includes 475 violent criminals sent to Kent County.

"There are people that think that prisons are filled with frauds and people that write bad checks. Prisons are filled with dangerous people," Gallagher, the former East Grand Rapids chief, said.

Among the violent, 136