DRUG OFFENDERS NEED FAIR SHAKE

System has moral obligation to adjust crack cocaine users' inflated sentences

The widespread panic over crack cocaine in the 1980s should have
taught us something: Splashy headlines don't usually translate into
sound public policy. In retrospect, the clamor to pass "strong"
anti-drug laws has warped our criminal justice system without
addressing the larger problems caused by drug abuse.

Last week, the U.S. Sentencing Commission heard testimony on a
controversial proposal to allow the early release of roughly 20,000
federal inmates who are serving longer sentences for crimes related
to crack cocaine than prisoners convicted of identical offenses
involving cocaine in its powdered form.

The independent panel, created by Congress in 1985, is attempting to
correct an injustice created by mandatory-minimum sentencing
guidelines adopted about 20 years ago.

At the time, politicians, law enforcement officials and others
labored under the misconception that crack - cooked into small
pebbles and then usually smoked - was more addictive and dangerous
than cocaine that's snorted, therefore requiring sterner sentences
for possession and distribution.

For example, selling 5 grams of crack (about a thimble full)
automatically brings a five-year sentence. To draw an identical
mandatory sentence, someone would have to sell 500 grams of powder
cocaine. Crack is also the only drug that triggers a five-year
mandatory sentence for a first offense of simple possession. Simple
possession of any quantity of other illicit substances by a
first-time offender - including powder cocaine - is a misdemeanor
punishable by a maximum of one year in prison.

The inequities in sentencing have also had an unmistakable racial
dynamic. African-Americans make up a disproportionate number of
inmates incarcerated for drug crimes, including crack, although the
reasons are more economic and cultural. Blacks in urban neighborhoods
who use or sell crack are easily picked up by police patrolling
neighborhood streets. By comparison, whites engaging in drug use have
tended to do so in more private settings where they were less likely
to be arrested.

As our prisons have filled to overflowing with often nonviolent drug
offenders, a growing chorus of voices has demanded that sentencing
for cocaine offenses be equalized. That coalition has included civil
rights groups, judges, prosecutors and chastened lawmakers who once
crusaded in favor of the stiffer sentences for crack.

Congress has sole authority to repeal mandatory-minimum sentences for
cocaine offenses, but has refused to do so. In the meantime, the
bi-partisan commission took a small step toward reform by lessening
the sentences imposed for crack, a change which went into effect Nov. 1.

But the panel also faces an admittedly tough question: Should the
new, more lenient sentences for crack offenses be applied
retroactively to those incarcerated under the old rules? Such an
unprecedented move would mean that the average federal inmate
convicted for crack-related crimes would be released 27 months
earlier. (Inmates in state and local lockups would not be affected.)

If that change is made, an estimated 3,800 inmates could become
eligible for early release within the next year unless Congress votes
to block implementation of the commission's decision. While the U.S.
Department of Justice argues that releasing so many prisoners en
masse would wreak havoc on the courts, keeping prisoners behind bars
in light of the new sentencing guidelines would be morally if not
legally indefensible.

Still, concerns about releasing thousands of prisoners into
communities still struggling to eradicate illegal drugs shouldn't be
taken lightly. If the sentencing commission makes the changes
retroactive, the courts and the federal parole board should closely
monitor inmates who are set free or resettled in halfway houses.

For example, inmates clinically addicted to cocaine must be given
access to medical treatment necessary to avoid a relapse that returns
them to prison.

The time has come for America to stop pretending that merely locking
people up will solve our nation's drug problems.

The federal government alone spends at least $13 billion a year to
fight the "war on drugs," mostly on law enforcement efforts that have
produced limited results beyond swelling the nation's prison
population to more than 2 million.

Until we dispense with sound-bite platitudes and undertake a rational
approach that includes more robust anti-drug education, job training
and placement, and substance-abuse treatment, this "war" will
continue to cost us dearly without any reasonable hope of victory.