Pubdate: Tue, 20 Feb 2001
Source: Daily Gazette (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The Gazette Newspapers
Contact:  P.O. Box 1090, Schenectady, NY 12301-1090
Fax: (518) 395-3072
Website: http://www.dailygazette.com/
Author: William Raspberry
Note: William Raspberry is a nationally syndicated columnist.

CLINTON TOO LATE ON SENTENCING REFORM

WASHINGTON - Black Americans have been screaming about the disparate 
sentences for crack and powder cocaine for a decade - ever since it became 
clear that the main effect of the 1988 drug-control legislation was a 
wildly disproportionate incarceration rate for black drug offenders.

Six days before he left office, President Clinton came riding to the 
rescue. Well, maybe not to the rescue, but he did recommend that the next 
sheriff give serious thought to forming a posse to do something about the 
problem.

The recommendation came in a Jan. 14 op-ed piece the lame-duck president 
wrote for The New York Times. He spoke with considerable passion about his 
desire that America move toward racial fairness and reconciliation. Then:

"We should also re-examine our federal sentencing policies, particularly 
mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders. We should immediately 
reduce the disparity between crack and powder-cocaine sentences."

Maybe it slipped his mind during his eight-year presidency that coincided 
almost exactly with the incarceration explosion.

Yes, explosion. According to a new report from the Justice Policy 
Institute, more inmates were added to prison and jail populations under 
Clinton than under any other president in American history. In federal 
prisons alone, more inmates were added on Clinton's watch than under former 
Presidents Bush and Reagan combined.

"President Clinton stole the show from the tough-on-crime Republicans," JPI 
president Vincent Schiraldi said in releasing the report, "Too Little, Too 
Late: President Clinton's Prison Legacy."

"President Clinton was right to call for criminal justice reform; he was 
wrong to do so little about it while he was in office."

As it happens, he had a chance at least to engage the crack/powder fight as 
early as his first term in office. In 1994, he signed a bill setting up a 
commission designed to develop and oversee sentencing guidelines. In 1995, 
the commission recommended equalizing the amount of cocaine, whether in 
powder or crack form, that would trigger the mandatory sentences that have 
been a major contributor to the incarceration explosion.

Such recommendations, says JPI senior policy analyst Jason Ziedenberg, 
usually win "virtually automatic acceptance." But this time, Congress 
rejected the recommendation, and Clinton, in effect, signed the rejection 
into law.

In other words, he passed up a chance to do what his recent New York Times 
piece so glibly recommends - reducing the high-sounding words of that 
column to a largely empty gesture. I'm reminded of the big deal he made of 
putting the District of Columbia's whiny new license plate - "Taxation 
Without Representation" - on the presidential limousine, in ostensible 
support for expanding the feeble franchise of local residents.

But the license-plate change - made just a couple of days before last 
Christmas - was about the sum of his official effort in that regard. 
President George W. Bush, in one of his first decisions as Clinton's 
successor, had the plates removed.

Interestingly, the Justice Policy Institute now is looking to Bush as the 
best hope for sentencing reform. The new report notes that Bush has 
expressed an interest in "making sure the powder-cocaine and crack-cocaine 
penalties are the same" and in diverting nonviolent offenders from prison 
into treatment. A Bush-Cheney campaign white paper called for providing an 
additional $1 billion for states to expand local drug treatment programs.

"When Clinton came into office, he had a 10-year incarceration rate to 
outshine," said JPI's Lisa Feldman, who co-authored "Too Little, Too Late."

"As the governor with the nation's largest prison population and the most 
executions, President Bush has no need to prove his conservative mettle. He 
has shown he can be tough on crime. Now he has the opportunity to prove he 
can be smart on crime as well."

Smart-aleck question: Who would get more credit among black voters - Bush 
for reforming the sentencing disparities we've been complaining about for 
so long? Or Clinton, for looking for office space in Harlem?
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart