MARTHA SEES SENTENCING INJUSTICES

The Christmas message Martha Stewart sent from her prison cell has
outlasted the holiday season. Inflexible sentencing recipes are
producing more bitterness than rehabilitation.

She is seeing how mandatory prison sentences for nonviolent crimes -
especially drug-related offenses - separate mothers from children and
destroy families.

Congress should take a close look at reforming a system that can give
a longer sentence to a first-time offender who sold a reefer than to
robbers and killers.

Stewart, in a federal prison camp in Alderson, W.Va., is halfway
through a five-month sentence for lying about the details of a stock
sale. Statistics from the Department of Justice confirm her
observation that reform is needed.

. Fifty-one percent of all the nation's inmates are nonviolent
offenders.

. One out of five prisoners is a drug offender. Drug arrests continue
an upward trend.

. Federal prisons are 39 percent over capacity. County jails and
state prisons also are crowded.

Congress, while lengthening sentences to appear tough on crime, has
left judges too little discretion. There are no simple solutions, but
Stewart is absolutely right. What she is seeing in the pen is not a
good thing.