U.S. MOTHER CAUTIONS CANADA ABOUT IRONCLAD DRUG PENALTIES

Ten years ago this spring, Karen Garrison watched as her twin sons
were locked up in prison, for longer than she ever thought possible.

Lamont and Lawrence, then 25, had just graduated from university in
Washington, D.C. They had no prior record. They wanted to become
lawyers. Instead, they were sent to jail for 15 and 19 years apiece,
for conspiring to sell crack cocaine.

The judge had no say in their punishment. Tough, mandatory minimum
sentences, crafted in 1986 at the height of the U.S. war on drugs,
meant the Garrisons would go to prison, without parole, for many years.

After a decade of heartache, and with her sons still serving time,
Karen Garrison has a warning for Canada: "Be careful with these
mandatory minimums -- the punishment doesn't often fit the crime,"
she says. "It can destroy families."

In November, the Harper government introduced legislation to create
Canada's first mandatory minimum sentences for drug trafficking.

Bill C-26, now before Parliament, would automatically send people to
jail for fixed terms of six months to three years for selling even
small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs.

Such changes -- Canada currently has no mandatory minimum penalties
for drug crimes -- fly in the face of almost all expert advice,
including two internal reports produced by the Justice Department itself.

The Conservatives are also pushing ahead with Bill C-26 at the very
moment the United States is repealing or reforming many of its own
mandatory minimum drug penalties, because of mounting evidence that
they don't work.

From California to Connecticut, state governments are rolling back
mandatory sentences in favour of more nuanced rules allowing
low-level street dealers, for example, or non-violent offenders, to
enter addiction centres instead of prison, or to benefit from early parole.

Even at the federal level, where mandatory minimum drug laws remain
intact, some Washington lawmakers are calling for change.

Yet despite the reformist trend, there also remains solid support for
mandatory minimums in many states.

In March, the U.S. Congress took the first step in reforming the
harsh sentencing regime for some crack cocaine offences, reducing
prison terms and making the changes retroactive -- meaning thousands
of inmates, including the Garrison twins, may soon have years cut
from their sentences.

Mandatory drug penalties have helped turn the U.S. into the world's
leading jailer, with more than 2.3 million people in prison,
according to the International Centre for Prison Studies in London.

The United States also has the world's highest per capita rate of
incarceration -- 751 people in jail for every 100,000 in population
- -- more than Russia at a rate of 627, China at 119, and Canada at 108.

In 2007, the U.S. also passed a sobering milestone: more than one of
every 100 adult Americans is now locked up in jail.

Mandatory drug laws contributed to this situation. Since 1980, the
number of Americans jailed for drug crimes has soared to 500,000 from
about 40,000.

The result is overcrowded prisons and overburdened corrections
budgets. But the biggest problem is the failure of such laws to
ensnare the criminals they're designed to target -- the kingpins and
dealers at the top of the drug trade.

One reason is that prosecutors plea bargain away mandatory jail time
in return for information that might lead to other arrests, but only
mid-to-higher-level traffickers have information to trade.

As a result, it's low-level dealers and addicts on the street,
without information to share, who end up, bizarrely, with the
mandatory sentences.

"Mandatory minimums are not an effective policy tool," says Peter
Reuter, co-director of the drug policy program at the Rand Corp.
"It's hard to find any evidence that the price of drugs has gone up,
or availability has gone down, thanks to these laws."

Such evidence convinced dozens of state governments in recent years
to reform their sentencing rules in the hopes of a more
cost-effective approach to the problem.

"The only people these laws benefit are the politicians," says
Chrystal Weaver, a Florida accountant who has campaigned against
mandatory drug penalties in her state. "People tend to vote for these
things because they like politicians who are tough on crime. But the
devil is in the details. Mandatory minimums don't make sense."

"Canada should learn from America's mistakes in the war on drugs and
just say no to mandatory minimum sentencing," said Julie Stewart,
president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums in a letter to
Stephen Harper last year, after Bill C-26 was introduced. "They are
not a cure-all. Instead they will create a whole new batch of
problems for Canadians everywhere."