`A MATTER OF FAIRNESS'? OR SELF-PRESERVATION?

"A matter of fairness" (Nov. 19 editorial) notes not only that that
the U.S. Sentencing Commission may cut at least two years off the
sentences of 20,000 drug dealers now in federal prisons, but also
that the Justice Department predicts this mass reduction would
"unravel the success we have achieved in removing violent crack
offenders from high crime neighborhoods." The Observer nonetheless
supports this proposal and notes that the criminals freed will "need
programs to help them" -- meaning, of course, transfers of resources
and income from taxpayers.

In advocating its goal of wealth transfers from the productive to the
non-productive, including even the criminal class, the Observer
subordinates the basic instinct of self-survival.

Philip M. Van Hoy