AS MANY CRACK CONVICTS ARE FREED EARLY, WILL CRIME RISE?

Of the 19,500 Drug Offenders Eligible Over the Next 30 Years to Apply
for Early Release, 3,417 Have Had Their Sentences Reduced as of Monday.

New York - In an effort to eliminate a legal inequity - one that has
hit African-Americans especially hard - federal judges have begun
reducing the sentences of thousands of crack-cocaine offenders.

Some police groups and prosecutors, as well as US Attorney General
Michael Mukasey, assert that in trying to right a historic wrong,
violent criminals are headed en masse back to the streets.

So far, indications are that this is not the case because the release
process has safeguards built in. Statistics from the US Sentencing
Commission, as well as interviews with federal public defenders and
criminal-justice experts, indicate that federal prisoners who are to
be released early are predominantly nonviolent and have good conduct
records while in prison. Of the 19,500 drug offenders eligible over
the next 30 years to apply for early release, 3,417 have had their
sentences reduced as of Monday. Of the 1,500 inmates eligible for
immediate release, dozens so far have been let go in the past month.

"There has been no release of a flood of violent criminals," says
Michael Nachmanoff, federal public defender for the Eastern District
of Virginia. "The people who are being released ... overwhelmingly
had cases where there was no violence whatsoever and who were given
unduly harsh sentences. And now, their sentences are being reduced by
a modest amount."

Critics worry the crime rate, which has already ticked upward, will
continue to increase as more prisoners apply for a sentence
reduction. The Justice Department, for example, has pointed out that
according to the Sentencing Commission's own analysis, nearly 80
percent of the 19,500 who would be eligible for early release had
prior criminal records. Of the 1,500 eligible for immediate release,
about one-quarter carried a weapon or were with someone who carried a
weapon when they were arrested.

"This tells us those who are eligible for early release are very
likely to commit another crime," Attorney General Mukasey told the
Fraternal Order of Police earlier this year.

The sentence reductions came about because last spring the Sentencing
Commission reduced the 100-to-1 crack-cocaine ratio in the
guidelines. That ratio was created by a 1986 law that deemed a person
convicted of possessing five grams of crack cocaine serve the same
mandatory minimum sentence as someone who was caught with 500 grams
of powder cocaine.

The result: Crack-cocaine offenders serve sentences up to eight times
longer than those sentenced for powder cocaine. Because crack is more
often used in minority neighborhoods, African-Americans account for
80 percent of those serving time for crack offenses.

Back in 1986, the 100-to-1 ratio was thought reasonable because crack
was believed to be far more addictive and prone to provoking
violence. Since then, scientific studies have concluded that crack
cocaine and powder cocaine affect the individual the same way and are
equally harmful.

In 1995, the Sentencing Commission determined that the violence
associated with crack had more to do with the way it was sold on
volatile street corners, rather than any inherent difference between
crack and powder cocaine. It then recommended to Congress that the
mandatory minimum sentences for the two types of cocaine be
equalized. But Congress rejected the recommendation. In 1997 and
again in 2002, the commission recommended the disparity at least be
reduced from 100-to-1 to 5-to-1. Both times Congress refused.

Last spring, the commission voted again to reduce the disparity. This
time, Congress did not actively oppose the change, and it went into
effect this past fall.

In December, the commission then voted to make the reduction
retroactive. That made the 19,500 federal prisoners currently serving
crack sentences eligible for early release. The potential average
sentence reduction would be a little more than two years.

The Justice Department urged Congress to again override the
Sentencing Commission. It warned that retroactivity would add to an
increase in crime.

But Congress allowed the commission's decision to stand. In part,
that's because a commission analysis of federal crack-cocaine
offenders also determined that 90 percent of their cases did not
involve violence. Of those 1,500 who would be available for immediate
release, the commission said, only 1 percent were deemed "career
criminals" and 6 percent "supervisors" of drug rings.

In addition, the commission also required that inmates eligible for a
reduced sentence apply to a federal judge. And the US attorney in
every district can oppose any sentence reduction if he or she deems
the inmate is too dangerous for early release.

"It seems like Mukasey is stoking the flames of fear, and I don't
understand why," says Julie Stewart, president of Families Against
Mandatory Minimums, which advocates sentencing reform. "All of these
people are only eligible for release. They're not guaranteed release.
It's up to Mukasey's US attorneys to argue against their release, if
they think they're going to go out and wreak havoc."

Mukasey's office says he stands by his earlier comments.

But many criminal-justice experts say the reduction in the disparity
is long overdue.

"I would agree, like most people, that the original legislation that
created the disparate sentences for crack versus powder was ill
conceived," says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern
University in Boston. "And therefore changes now to remedy mistakes
of the past make sense."

The revised guidelines have been structured well, criminal-justice
experts say, in that the decision about reducing an inmate's sentence
rests with a federal judge.

"In the cases where the retroactive application of the guideline is
pretty clear cut, we are getting agreement from the US attorney's
office," says Miriam Conrad, federal public defender for
Massachusetts and New Hampshire. "There are some cases in which the
legal issues are somewhat more complex, and those are ones that it
may take a little bit longer to sort out."

Still, some law-enforcement officials remain skeptical. The Fraternal
Order of Police credits the tough mandatory minimum sentences with
helping to bring about the reduction in crime in the 1990s. If
crack-cocaine disparity is unfair, the organization says, then it
would be better to increase the penalties for powder cocaine to the
level of crack sentences.

"We believe that letting these people out, their presence on the
street, will further harden that trend upward in the crime rate,"
says James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Professor Fox agrees that there is concern about releasing a large
number of crack-cocaine offenders, particularly because many of those
eligible for early release now are from a generation that struggled
with high levels of criminality in the '80s and early '90s. But they
all will be released eventually, he notes.

"Under the logic that we shouldn't let them out because they may
reoffend, well, that's true today, may be true tomorrow, and a decade
from now," he says. "We have not done much in the meantime to ensure
there's positive change when people are in prison."

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Murky Case: Twins Ask for Release

The change in the sentencing guidelines, while a legal technicality,
does have a significant impact on individuals' lives. Karen Garrison,
a Washington, D.C., mother, has fought for 10 years to have the
guidelines changed because she feels her twin sons were unjustly
convicted under the 1986 law.

Just a month after graduating from Howard University in Washington
with degrees in political science, Lawrence and Lamont Garrison were
convicted of dealing crack cocaine. They had been named as
conspirators by a man accused of running an automobile body shop to
hide a significant crack-cocaine distribution network in Maryland,
according to a summary of court records. Other conspirators he named
also implicated the Garrisons, saying they saw them receive large
quantities of crack cocaine from the dealer.

When police searched the Garrisons' home, belongings, and bank
accounts, they did not find any drugs or indications of large cash
infusions. Indeed, both had significant debts from college. But
police did find phone records that indicated the twins were in
regular contact with the dealer at the auto body shop. The Garrisons
said that was because they were fixing up an old car at the time, a
hobby of theirs. They insisted they were innocent, refused to
cooperate, and went to trial.

"They believed in the system. They said, 'Mommy, don't worry, when we
go to court, they'll see we're not drug dealers,' " Ms. Garrison
says. " 'They'll see that we were at school, that we don't do those things.' "

Nonetheless, both were convicted. Lawrence was given 15-1/2 years and
Lamont 19-1/2 years, because he was also convicted of perjury,
according to a summary of the Garrisons' case. That summary showed
that the dealer who accused them cooperated with prosecutors and was
sentenced to three years.

"If you can't find any drugs or any guns or money and they're taking
the word of an informant and not really checking out his story, a lot
of people who are innocent are going to end up in jail like my sons,"
Ms. Garrison says.

Whatever the truth of the matter, each brother has served more than
10 years now. During that time, they taught other inmates high-school
equivalency and legal writing classes, and neither has had any
problems, according to their mother.

Both have applied for a reduction in their sentences.

If approved by the federal judge, Lawrence could be home sometime
this year. Lamont could have his sentence reduced by almost four
years and be home in 2012.