MISSING A CHANCE ON DRUGS

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 New York Times
piece so glibly recommended -- 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?