PRISONS' LOSS MAY BE A GAIN

With Saddam Hussein deposed and the Soviet Union dead, the United States
stands alone as the planet's prison camp. This country has the world's
highest rate of incarceration and more than 2 million people behind bars.

Perhaps the fiscal crisis that threatens to swamp state budgets has one
fortuitous feature: It may force state legislatures to rescind the harsh
laws that have filled prison beds and blown prison budgets. Already,
several states have begun early release programs as deficits force cutbacks
in prison spending.

Will that lead to an increase in violent crime, a reversal of the public
safety gains made over the past decade? That depends on which felons are
being released. Murderers, rapists and those convicted of armed robberies
should be kept behind bars --- perhaps for life. Locking away violent
felons protects law-abiding citizens from physical assault.

But the criminal justice policies of the past 20 years or so have
incarcerated not only vicious predators but also countless nonviolent
offenders, including drug offenders, who might easily be rehabilitated
through cheaper alternative sentencing options. Locking up nonviolent
offenders for long stretches has not made the streets safer.

Instead, it has drained public coffers while producing a new class of
violent thugs. Nonviolent offenders locked away with hardened criminals are
likely to end their prison stretches, if they survive them, as hardened
criminals themselves.

And because the criminal justice system is not yet colorblind, the harsh
justice of the last several years has also decimated black America. Drug
prosecutions, especially, have targeted blacks.

"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.

Just one example is the horrendous miscarriage of justice in Tulia, Texas,
where several blacks, caught in a series of drug arrests in 1999, were sent
to prison based on the false testimony of an unreliable, racist law
enforcement officer, Tom Coleman. Coleman eventually conceded that he never
wore a recorder, never used video surveillance and never asked a partner to
accompany him. He also admitted that he routinely used racial epithets.

Still, judges and prosecutors were swayed by his thin and uncorroborated
evidence. Now, the state is moving to overturn the convictions of dozens of
defendants.

While Tulia is unusual for its obvious law enforcement misconduct, blacks
routinely receive a harsher justice than whites. A white drug offender
convicted for the first time would be more likely to get probation than a
black defendant guilty of the same offense, research shows.

As a result, one-third of black men between 20 and 34 are behind bars,
according to Allen Beck, chief prison demographer for the federal Bureau of
Justice Statistics. And that stunning statistic minimizes the overall blow:
Nearly 30 percent of black men will be incarcerated during their lives,
Beck said.

This --- and the AIDS epidemic --- are twin catastrophes that are
decimating black America. With so many black men behind bars, there is
little hope for rebuilding the black family structure. And the cycle only
repeats itself in the next generation: Social workers point out that
children with fathers in prison are more likely to grow up poor, drop out
of school, become parents too soon and drift into lives of crime themselves.

The current fiscal emergency is claiming its share of victims. It has
closed hospitals, cut teachers and ended the school year early in some
states. But if the recession also forces states to reconsider their high
rates of incarceration, it will grant a bit of relief and restore sanity to
the criminal justice system.