COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

Long Sentences For Nonviolent Offenders Pack State Prisons And Wreck
Families

John Bell did the crime. He doesn't deny it.

A 34-year-old former state corrections officer, Bell is serving 10 years for
drug possession with intent to distribute. In March 2000, he was caught with
205 grams of crack -- about $6,000 to $7,000 worth -- on I-20 near Madison.

He writes letters to his wife, Faye, from prison. He says he's sorry he let
her down, sorry about the kids, the bills.

"Why didn't I listen to my wife about my involvement with drugs?" Bell wrote
in November 2002. "I remember you always use to tell me. John you're gonna
get caught, and go to prison. . . .

"I am also constantly reminded that I put myself at this disadvantage, and
it has cost me dearly with my children."

Bell is guilty, but he is contrite and has already served two years since
his conviction in April 2001. How long does he belong in prison?

He didn't rape or rob, murder or maim. He sold drugs to those who wanted to
buy. He had no prior felony convictions, yet his first opportunity for
parole is in 2006.

Bell's lengthy imprisonment reflects the scorched-earth tactics of the war
on drugs, which has done little to curb illegal narcotics but has been a
remarkable boon for the prison business. It has also acted as a weapon of
mass destruction in black America, taking young men away from home, family
and community and stigmatizing them for life with prison records.

Nationally, an estimated 12 percent of black men between the ages of 20 and
34 are behind bars, according to Allen Beck, chief prison demographer for
the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Similar statistics are not available at
the state level; because Georgia has the nation's sixth-highest
incarceration rate, its percentage of young black men behind bars may even
exceed the national level of 12 percent.

The stunning rise in incarceration rates for black men began after the
nation became serious about its second Prohibition -- stamping out illegal
narcotics. In 1954, black inmates accounted for 30 percent of the nation's
prison population, according to Marc Mauer, assistant director of The
Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that advocates alternative
sentencing. Nearly 50 years later, he wrote, blacks account for almost half
of all prison admissions. Much of that increase, criminologists say, has
come from arrests for drug crimes.

Harsh Attitude Prevails

The shock-and-awe phase of Georgia's drug war peaked a little more than a
decade ago. In a poll of Georgia legislators by The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution in 1990, a majority said they would would send
first-time drug offenders to prison, even if they had to raise taxes to do
it. Given the harsh attitude toward drug offenders, repeat offenders and
first-timers alike, it's no surprise that Georgia's prison population
includes more than 7,000 felons convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.

Though research shows blacks are no more likely to use drugs than whites, 72
percent of Georgia's drug felons are black. "Blacks are arrested and
confined in numbers grossly out of line with their use or sale of drugs,"
Michael Tonry, criminal justice expert and author of "Malign Neglect: Race,
Crime & Punishment in America," wrote in 1995.

Researchers cite at least three reasons for the disparity:

1. Poverty. Because they are more likely to be poor, black suspects often
can't afford expensive lawyers or private drug treatment.

2. Visibility. Drug-related offenses typically occur more openly in poor
black neighborhoods than in affluent white ones, inviting more police
scrutiny.

3. Inequality. The criminal justice system is simply not yet colorblind.
Even when convicted of the same offense, the white offender is more likely
to get probation, while the black offender is more likely to draw prison
time.

Research "has demonstrated with remarkable regularity that minority-group
members (particularly African-Americans) and the poor get longer sentences,
have less chance of gaining parole or probation, even when the seriousness
of the crime and the criminal record of the defendants" are the same,
according to Gary W. Potter, professor of criminology at Eastern Kentucky
University.

While the harsh tactics of the war on drugs have done considerable social
and cultural damage to black Georgia, the state's taxpayers -- black, white
and brown -- have also paid dearly to incarcerate so many nonviolent
offenders. This year, for example, housing its 7,000 drug offenders will
cost the state an estimated $125 million.

Overall, Georgia's prison population continues to soar. Including inmates
awaiting transfer from county jails, Georgia now houses more than 50,000
prisoners. And the state Department of Corrections' budget will reach nearly
$1 billion this year.

State lawmakers were never tested on their 1990 commitment to harsh justice
over fiscal restraint; a decade of plenty allowed the state to build prisons
and cut taxes at the same time. But the economy has screeched to a halt.
This year, the Georgia Legislature was forced to raise taxes while slashing
popular programs in education and recreation. Next year, the state could be
faced with a budget deficit of a billion dollars.

With teachers clamoring for raises, parents demanding smaller classes and
rural hospitals threatening to close, will lawmakers still insist on
spending millions a year to keep nonviolent men like John Bell behind bars?

Serial Paternity

Interviewed at Wayne State Prison in Odum, Bell said bad luck and big bills
left him desperate for cash, and his job guarding prisoners paid only about
$22,000 a year. But a closer look reveals a reckless bachelorhood and serial
paternity that set him up for the temptations of peddling drugs.

Enlisting in the Navy right after high school, Bell was already a father,
having had a son, Johnathen, 17, with his high school girlfriend, Sylvia
Pierce. He enjoyed his job in communications and electronics but left the
Navy in 1990 after four years, frightened, he said, by an explosion aboard
his ship, the USS Iowa, in 1989.

By then, he'd already impregnated a Navy petty officer. He'd met Alfreda
Lassiter, who happened to be from Millen, when both were stationed at
Norfolk, Va. Their daughter, Taja, was born in September 1990.

By the time Bell married in 1991, he already had three children with three
women. His son, Arkeen, was born in August 1990 to Iris Tarver. He didn't
marry her, either. Instead, he married Faye Carter, who already had a child,
Adrian Carter, now 18. Later, the Bells had two other children, Carneshia,
10, and John Jr., 6.

Downward Spiral

Until his arrest, Bell says, he always supported his children financially,
including the three he fathered outside marriage: "I took care of all of
them since they been in this world. That's one thing I never had a problem
with."

And for a time, he and his wife were able to handle the financial load as he
constantly looked for better jobs with more generous benefits.

In 1998, he left a metal production plant in Millen for a job as a
supervisor with Silver Line, a building products company in Atlanta; the
job, he said, paid more than $30,000 a year, a substantial step up. He and
Faye planned to move. She came to town to look at houses.

Then, disaster struck. Headed home to Millen for his sister's wedding, Bell
broke his neck in a car accident near downtown Atlanta on May 23, 1998.
Doctors told him he might remain paralyzed.

He didn't. He recovered, but his hospital stay was lengthy and set off a
spiral of escalating debt. He looked at first for jobs that paid more but
finally settled on a position as a guard with the Georgia Department of
Corrections, starting at Reidsville in August 1999.

By then, he was already behind with child support payments and struggling to
keep up with his mortgage.

"I couldn't see any way out," he said.

Faye knew he was selling drugs and begged him to stop. "I told him not to do
that and just depend on the Lord," she said. "I kept talking to him and
telling him to leave it alone."

When he was arrested, "she blew up, she got mad," Bell recalled. "She's been
a Christian since three years after we got married, so she was real upset."

Now Faye does the best she can -- caring for her children alone, working on
a local assembly line, attending night classes in nursing, visiting her
husband when she can, clinging to her faith.

"I'm so tired of paying these bills by myself," she said recently in a
telephone interview from her home in Millen.

She also wonders whether the justice system has been fair to her husband.
"He's never been in trouble before, not since I've known him," she said.

Public Mood Changing

A post-sentencing report by the State Board of Pardons and Paroles confirmed
that Bell has no prior felony convictions. But his brief career in
corrections may have provoked a backlash among board members, who likely
were disturbed that a man wearing a badge was engaged in felony drug sales.

But the board, which has considerable authority to set its own standards for
release of prisoners, was also keenly aware of the public mood that had led
to stiff sentences for drug violators in the 1980s and '90s. The temperament
of those times tended to view every petty dealer as a potential Pablo
Escobar. According to paroles board guidelines, Bell's offense, though
nonviolent, merits a more severe penalty than child molestation, statutory
rape or killing somebody while driving drunk.

The public mood may now be changing as the public purse is drained by the
competing demands of more prisons and more parks, more corrections officers
and more calculus teachers. Around the country, strained budgets have forced
some states to release prisoners early.

Guidelines Proposed

And even before the economy went sour, many criminologists were beginning to
recommend less severe sanctions for nonviolent drug offenders. Former Gov.
Roy Barnes appointed a Governor's Commission on Certainty in Sentencing,
which made its recommendations to Gov. Sonny Perdue in December. Its
guidelines would reduce the percentage of simple drug possession cases
entering the prison system from its current 17 percent to 4 percent. (The
commission did not recommend changes for inmates such as Bell.)

Other jurisdictions have already begun to use a range of alternatives for
inmates like Bell, including detention and diversion centers and day report
centers. In a day report center, Bell might hold down a job during the day,
paying taxes and child support, and report back to his cell at night.
Taxpayers would save money; indeed, Bell would be paying taxes rather than
just consuming them.

If caught selling drugs again, he might be sentenced to a more confined area
where he might still work but only on the grounds of the facility. Such
alternatives, which include jobs, would increase Bell's chances for a
successful transition to a life of freedom.

As it is, he mostly just sits and waits. And writes forlorn lines to his
wife: "People may say prison doesn't change anyone. I can't speak for no one
else, but as far as I'm concerned, I refuse to allow myself to come back. .
. .

"My only desires are now to be a good husband and father, support my family
legally and spend quality time with my family. I just pray that I'll be home
to all of you sooner than the 50 months they want me to do."