Pubdate: Sat, 28 Jun 2008
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: 5, Section B
Copyright: 2008 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Samuel G. Freedman
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)

UNLIKELY ALLIES ON A FORMER WEDGE ISSUE

During his years as the attorney general of Virginia, Mark Earley 
periodically visited his state's prisons. In a very real way, he was 
looking at the human consequences of his career as a public servant, 
the men and women jailed for fixed, lengthy sentences without parole 
under laws Mr. Earley had endorsed. Not surprisingly, many inmates 
pulled back a few steps when introduced to their visitor.

Eventually, though, Mr. Earley took their measure. What he 
discovered, he recalled in a recent interview, were "not the Ted 
Bundys, the mass murderers" but "kids who reminded me of my kids, 
serving 5, 10, 15 years for drugs and going out and being rearrested again."

In those moments of recognition, Mr. Earley began a startling 
transformation from a tough-on-crime crusader to an advocate for 
prison reform and a prominent critic of the very type of drug laws he 
had formerly promoted. Since leaving the attorney's general's 
position in 2001, Mr. Earley has taken his new cause to a position as 
president of Prison Fellowship Ministries, a national organization 
based in the Washington suburbs.

Motivated both by religious faith and a secular analysis of public 
policy, Mr. Earley and the fellowship's vice president, Pat Nolan, a 
former California legislator, have regularly testified before 
Congress, written op-ed essays and given speeches on behalf of 
efforts to roll back mandatory-minimum sentencing, equalize penalties 
for crack and powder cocaine, and offer nonviolent offenders 
treatment rather than incarceration, among other initiatives.

On the surface a redoubt of the religious right, firmly rooted in 
evangelical Christianity and conservative politics, the Prison 
Fellowship Ministries' liberal position on such issues underscores 
the increasing irrelevance of such rigid categories.

The group's role in criminal justice bears similarity to the stance 
taken by evangelical leaders like Rick Warren, pastor of the 
Saddleback Church in Southern California, on global warming, AIDS 
prevention and Third World poverty.

"What's distinct is that we're in an 'Aha!' moment now," Mr. Earley, 
53, said in a phone conversation. "The crime issue used to be such a 
driving wedge between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and 
Republicans, and now it's not. In the presidential campaign this 
year, when have you heard crime as a wedge issue? It's a 
common-ground issue, and no one would have envisioned that in the 
'70s and '80s."

Indeed, an earlier, opposite version of bipartisanship during the 
1990s led to the proliferation of severe antidrug laws and a boom in 
prison construction. President Bill Clinton in 1994 introduced a $30 
billion anticrime bill, a main element in his effort to move the 
Democratic Party toward the center, if not the right, on the 
law-and-order issue.

To whatever degree the pendulum has now swung toward second thoughts 
about drug laws, the efforts of a group like Prison Ministry 
Fellowship have been both a cause and an effect.

What is indisputable is that those efforts have made for an 
unexpected coalition. While heading into the Capitol one day last 
year, Mr. Nolan recalled, he was spontaneously embraced and called 
Baby by Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat, who had been his 
political antagonist when both served in the California Legislature.

"What the Prison Fellowship brings to the discussion is a different 
approach, a different perspective, that says this is not a 
liberal-versus-conservative debate," said Marc Mauer, the executive 
director of the Sentencing Project, a group based in Washington, D.C. 
"This is about what is effective policy and compassionate policy."

Last year the prison-reform movement won Congressional passage of the 
Second Chance Act, which supports job training, education and other 
services for prisoners being released. Also in 2007, the federal 
Sentencing Commission amended its guidelines to stop penalizing 
crimes involving crack more severely than those involving powder 
cocaine. The governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, a Republican, 
reversed the state's lifetime ban on voting by felons.

What brought Mr. Earley and Mr. Nolan into the debate was a mix of 
factors. Before their arrival, Prison Fellowship Ministries -- 
founded by Charles Colson after he served a prison sentence for his 
role in the Watergate scandal -- had already staked out reformist 
positions on prison rape and prisoner rehabilitation. Mr. Earley 
referred to his political evolution as "an attitude-adjustment by 
God." Mr. Nolan, 58, experienced his own road-to-Damascus moment 
while serving a two-year prison sentence in the mid-1990s on a 
corruption charge.

"I went into prison believing in God, and I came out knowing him," he 
said. "I understood how much he loved us, even in a dark place."

Practical reasoning coincided with revelation. Nationally, Mr. Earley 
had seen the population of state and federal prisons triple to 1.5 
million over 20 years, and spending on corrections increase by 125 
percent. The result, he came to believe, was that "the people we sent 
to jail were coming out without rehabilitation, without drug 
treatment, more bitter and more antisocial than they went in."

Not every precinct of the religious right has been persuaded. Julie 
Stewart, president of the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory 
Minimums, said her organization had been repeatedly rebuffed by Focus 
on the Family, the influential and powerful group led by the Rev. 
James Dobson. Still, the drug war's dissidents now clearly exist on 
both sides of the partisan and ideological divide.

"In a way, that's a religious experience, too," Mr. Nolan said of the 
unlikely alliance. "Doesn't the Bible tell us the lion and lamb 
should lie down together?" 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake