THE HUGE COST OF HARSH SENTENCES

Sometimes the right things happen for the wrong reasons. With state
after state facing looming budget deficits, legislatures are starting
to look anew at the harsh sentencing laws passed during the era when
being "tough on crime" was a ticket to political office. Finally,
counterproductive laws, such as mandatory minimums that put
nonviolent, first-time drug offenders away for a decade or more, are
being reviewed. It may be happening due to a new interest in the
bottom line, but whatever the reason, the trend is positive.

This nation has built itself into one of the largest bastilles in the
world. Spurred along by politicians pandering to the public's fear of
crime, the prison building boom during the last 30 years has resulted
in a 500-percent increase in the number of state prisoners. We now
spend $30-billion annually to keep more than 2-million inmates in our
nation's prisons and jails. But with crime rates having dropped
significantly and lawmakers looking for places to trim expenses,
prison budgets are finally turning up as an option for the chopping
block.

Of course, there is a right way and a wrong way to make needed cuts,
and Kentucky has chosen the latter. The governor there has ordered the
release of 567 prisoners as part of the effort to address a
$500-million budget deficit. But this backdoor approach is too
willy-nilly and may result in prisoners being released who pose a
continuing danger to society. More sensible approaches are under
consideration in Michigan and Kansas, where the front door is addressed.

In Michigan, the Legislature responded to budget constraints by
repealing its mandatory-minimum sentencing laws -- a scheme so harsh
that some people were given life sentences for mere possession of
heroin or cocaine. Republican Gov. John Engler is expected to sign the
repeal. In Kansas, cost cutting has led the Kansas Sentencing
Commission, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers and others, to recommend
that those arrested for drug possession, with no violent crimes or
drug trafficking offenses in their background, should be diverted into
treatment.

These reasonable reforms are long overdue, and they mirror an
encouraging national trend. Through voter initiative or legislative
reform, states are starting to treat drug offenses as a public health
problem. Anyone who isn't a drug-war zealot can't help but question
the rationality of sentencing schemes that put nonviolent addicts
behind bars rather than providing them with treatment. According to
the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group that investigates the
consequences of our national corrections policies, of the $5-billion
spent annually for keeping people convicted of drug crimes behind
bars, 75 percent goes toward the costs of warehousing nonviolent
offenders. In a time of tight budgets, this expenditure is
irresponsible.

Florida imposes mandatory-minimum sentences of 25 years for illegally
carrying a pillbox-worth of drugs such as Oxycontin, a medication used
to treat chronic pain that has been abused by the dance-club set. When
our legislators sit down in March to figure out how to close the
gaping hole in the budget, here's a place to start.