BUSH: THE REAL DEAL ON SENTENCING REFORM?

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 that 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 reexamine 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, which coincided
almost exactly with the incarceration explosion.

Yes, explosion. According to a new report from the Justice Policy Institute
(JPI), 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 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 Bush, in one of his first decisions as Clinton's successor, had
the plates removed.

Interestingly, JPI 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?