ATTACKING JUDGES, NOT DRUGS

One of every 138 U.S. residents is now serving time. Get-tough policies
enacted in the 1980s and 1990s -- like three-strikes laws in California and
other states -- have swelled the jail and prison inmate population to a
record 2.1 million, according a new federal report.

Many criminal justice experts believe that longer prison terms and tougher
parole rules helped push down the crime rate over the last decade, in part
by keeping repeat offenders locked up. So a bill by Rep. F. James
Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) upping already harsh sentences for low-level
drug offenders can only be a good thing, right? Wrong.

Federal law already requires judges to impose a five-year term on even
first-time offenders in cases involving most illegal drugs, including
cocaine and methamphetamine. Sensenbrenner's bill would add new crimes and
more prison time to a sentencing scheme that is already extraordinarily
punitive -- and in many cases it targets first-time offenders, not the
violent three-strikers whose incarceration may have helped to lower the
crime rate. The cynically titled Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child
Protection Act of 2005 does little to push drug treatment but could do much
to harm children. It would also make a bad sentencing system worse and
punish judges who have rightly criticized its many inequities.

The bill, now before the House Judiciary Committee, would require five-year
terms for the sale or distribution of every illegal drug, no matter how
small the amount or the penalty under state law. Share a line of cocaine
with a friend or give away a single tab of Ecstasy and you may join the 900
or so new inmates marched behind bars each week in recent years. Offenders
with a prior conviction on almost any drug charge would automatically get
10 years. Adults who sold to minors could get life.

What about drug treatment? The bill, HR 1528, makes it a crime to sell or
distribute drugs within 1,000 feet of a drug treatment facility. It also
sets mandatory terms for offenses committed near schools, colleges, video
arcades, day-care centers and libraries. That's the "child protection" part.

The measure is just as likely to pull families apart. Parents who see but
don't report drug use in the home -- even if their child wasn't present --
would get a mandatory term. So if Dad watches Mom smoke marijuana in their
living room, they both head to prison, and Junior goes to foster care. Drug
treatment would surely seem the smarter solution for such a family.

To oppose this bill is hardly to condone drug use. It is to acknowledge
that drug laws have already reached the point of diminishing returns. Drug
offenders already are serving longer sentences than felons convicted on
federal manslaughter or assault charges. Taxpayers are on the hook for
prison costs that are spiraling out of control, and judges of all political
stripes have slammed mandatory drug sentences as overkill.

Sensenbrenner and his Republican allies know all this. But furious over
recent Supreme Court decisions returning to judges small shreds of
discretion in applying these draconian laws, they are bent on reversing
those gains. Instead of cutting drug use, the real goal of this bill is to
score political points in a larger war against the judiciary.