Pubdate: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 Source: Valley Morning Star (TX) Copyright: 1999 Valley Morning Star Contact: http://www.valleystar.com/pages/sections/starletters.htm Mail: 1310 S. Commerce, Harlingen, TX 78550 Website: http://www.valleystar.com/ Forum: http://www.valleystar.com/cgi-bin/discus_2t/show.cgi?2/2.html Note: The editorial quotes Keven Zeese below. See: http://www.csdp.org/ for details about The Effective National Drug Control Strategy PRISONS BULGE WITH DRUG OFFENDERS With crime rates down and prison populations soaring, it's easy to conclude that he latter has much to do with the former. America's long-term efforts to lock up more violent criminals has, indeed, reduced street crime. But the current prison boom has more to do with the nation's war on drugs that on its battle against violent crime. "No matter how much crime plummets, the United States will have to add the equivalent of a new 1,000-bed jail or prison every week -- for perhaps another decade," according to a New York Times article published recently. That follows a decade in which the U.S. prison population has nearly doubled to almost 2 million inmates. Mandatory sentencing laws, enacted during the 1980s anti-drug frenzy, have led to the current situation, in which 400,000 people are serving time nationwide for drug crimes. About 60 percent of federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses -- three times the rate 15 years ago, according to the article. To put things in perspective, the United States Sentencing Commission reports that the average time served in federal prisons for drug trafficking is 82.3 months. That compares to 73.3 months for sexual abuse, 38.8 months for assault, 34.2 months for manslaughter and 22.9 months for bribery. Federal sentencing priorities appear to be out of order. "We went through a period in the mid-1980s where we were just ratcheting up drug sentences," said Kevin B. Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, a drug-law reform organization in Falls Church, Va. "We put in place a system with more and more people going to jail for longer and longer time periods." The nation, he said, he embraced "this mandatory approach to things" in which judges no longer have the authority to see if an individual really is "a danger to society." People caught buying, selling or using even small amounts of illegal drugs are hit with stiff automatic sentences, which means that nonviolent drug users end up serving time with hardened felons. What should be done? In the short term, Zeese urges lawmakers to move away from mandatory sentencing and toward a more traditional judicial approach that looks at individual circumstances. He also calls for shorter prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses. In the long term, he said Americans must decide, "Which is better to control drugs: an illegal market enforced by police or a legal market enforced by administrative law?" We agree. As politically dangerous as these proposals may be, they offer a realistic alternative to an ever-expanding and costly prison-building campaign that continues to fill the prison with drug offenders, and not just those who are menaces to society. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake