WAR ON DRUGS NETS SMALL-TIME OFFENDERS

Texas' war on drugs punishes few major importers and dealers but imprisons
thousands caught with less than a sugar packet full of cocaine or other
illegal drugs.

The battle rages most fiercely in Harris County.

Of the 58,000 drug convictions won by local prosecutors over the past five
years, 77 percent involved less than a gram of a drug, according to
district court data analyzed by the Houston Chronicle. Harris County sent
35,000 of these small-time offenders to jail or prison.

The numbers suggest that these men and women are collateral damage in the
war on drugs, arrested because they were easy targets rather than objects
of a grand strategy.

The impact is felt most harshly in black neighborhoods.

"My people are suffering," said the Rev. F.N. Williams of Antioch
Missionary Baptist Church, voicing a growing frustration with the high
proportion of blacks in prison. "If the ground can be level, let's make it
level."

A recent national report on incarceration patterns concluded there is "a
two-tiered 'war,' in which middle-income communities with resources can
address their drug problems privately as a health issue, while low-income
neighborhoods are essentially consigned to criminal justice mechanisms."

In Texas, drug abusers sentenced to prison often find waiting lists for
counseling programs so long that they are released before they can get in.
That means these addicts are thrown back into the same situations they
left, this time with a felony record and further diminished prospects.

Recognizing the effect on their community, a coalition of black religious
leaders, Houston Ministers Against Crime, has started sitting in on court
hearings and lobbying state and local officials to make changes.

Easy Targets

"Drugs cross racial barriers, from Acres Homes to Kingwood," said the Rev.
Carl Davis of New Life Tabernacle Church in Acres Homes, a poor, largely
black neighborhood about 20 miles from Kingwood, a mostly white suburb.
"Why is it that only your ethnic minorities are the ones that end up
incarcerated?"

State District Judge Michael T. McSpadden, who has encouraged the ministers
to focus their efforts on reducing minor drug crimes from felonies to
misdemeanors, acknowledged that the disparity may look like a conspiracy
against the underclass. But in reality, he said, it reflects arrests of
opportunity.

Police and prosecutors are not conducting sting operations and
investigations to catch people with less than a gram. Instead, they arrest
people leaving crack motels and other known drug hangouts or respond to
resident complaints.

People from tony neighborhoods use drugs privately, McSpadden said, whereas
in poor communities, drug users and dealers often loiter in the streets.
Because neighbors call the police to complain, more people are arrested in
the Fifth Ward than in River Oaks.

The result: 62 percent of those convicted for less than 1 gram of drugs in
Harris County were black and 37 percent white, according to the Chronicle
analysis. It was not possible to tell how many were Hispanic.

Harris County's population is 42 percent Anglo, 33 percent Hispanic and 18
percent black.

Experts say that, regardless of race, the people ensnared by these drug
policies overwhelmingly are poor and uneducated.

'This Is A Waste Of Time'

One of them, Tonya Ford, questions why she is being punished instead of
being treated for her addiction.

"It's like us being animals," she said. "It's like locking a dog up because
it has rabies."

Ford, 27, was pulled over in November leaving a known drug hangout with a
nearly empty crack pipe in her car. She is now serving six months in the
Plane State Jail near Dayton.

Most of the less-than-a-gram drug cases, including Ford's, never went to
trial. The defendants pleaded guilty and took their several-month prison
sentences or, in the minority of cases, several years probation. When the
cases do go before a jury, though, jurors often complain.

"Every single time they'll say, 'Judge, what were we doing here? This is a
waste of time,' " said McSpadden, a Republican. "I couldn't agree with them
more."

A national expert on prison sentences for drug offenders called Harris
County's statistics astonishing, even in the face of a national trend
toward locking up low-level drug offenders. Most other communities, he
said, reserve their jail space for those caught peddling drugs on street
corners rather than carrying around cocaine residue.

"It sounds remarkable to me," said Marc Mauer, assistant director of The
Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that
researches criminal justice issues.

Nearly half of Texas' 15,000 state jail prisoners are serving time for drug
convictions involving less than 1 gram, and half of those are from Harris
County, according to Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council statistics.

Harris County is driving the population of nonviolent offenders in the
state jails, a system of 25 lower-security facilities started in 1993 to
alleviate prison crowding. Today, 37 percent of the state jail inmates come
from Harris County, more than double the county's share of the total Texas
population.

The next three most populous counties combined -- Dallas, Bexar and Tarrant
- -- send considerably fewer prisoners to the state jails, a 2000 report from
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows.

Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said the incarceration
rates are high simply because his office is doing its job.

"If you give me a law, I'll enforce it," Rosenthal said. "If you take it
off the books, that's fine. I'm not in the legislative business, I'm in the
enforcement business."

While Rosenthal would prefer that his attorneys have more time to devote to
violent crime, he said, "sweeping (crack and cocaine cases) under the rug"
will not help addicts recover from their law-breaking addictions.

But as police, prosecutors and judges all follow the letter of the law,
critics say the system has run amok.

In an unlikely coalition of sorts, McSpadden, the ministers group and
Rosenthal said the drug court, now in the planning stages, should be open
by next fall. The Republican district attorney is skeptical that it will be
effective.

Rosenthal said he has looked at drug courts around the country and thought
their standards for success were too low, patting themselves on the back if
graduates do not get felony convictions within six months of release. But
he is working toward implementation of the court.

"The law says it's a good idea," he said, "and I follow the law."