ADDICTS BEHIND BARS / COULD THE REAL CRIME BE PUNISHMENT?

What sensible soul approves of illegal drug use? Not a one. The practice
ruins families, wrecks neighborhoods and destroys futures. Given the great
harm drug abuse inflicts, you'd think the "war on drugs" would be a
no-brainer. But it isn't. In fact, it appears to be among the most brainless
and ineffective government ventures of recent times.

The matter comes to mind because a growing group of Minnesotans -- many
associated with local churches -- are challenging the wisdom of waging such
a war. They wonder how it can be that that U.S. incarceration rates have
risen to an all-time high while crime rates have hit a three-decade low. For
the wonderers, those discordant trends raise a question: Since a smaller
share of Americans are breaking the law than at any time since the '70s,
who's being locked up?

The answer, of course, is drug addicts -- most of them imprisoned under
mandatory-minimum sentencing laws enacted two decades back. In 1980, there
were about 42,000 drug offenders in America's prisons and jails; now the
number is nearing half a million.

Imprisoning drug offenders might make sense if it worked to squelch drug
abuse. But it doesn't: States that boost drug-offender incarceration rates
typically experience a jump in drug use. Worse, the drug kingpins that
mandatory minimums were created to disable don't seem to be the ones feeling
their sting: Most of America's drug inmates are low-level users or
penny-ante street dealers; only about a tenth qualify as big-time dealers.

To people who care about fairness and good sense, packing prisons with
addicts is troubling. For one thing, there's the hard math of racism:
African-Americans are 13 times more likely to be imprisoned on drug offenses
than whites -- even though illicit drug use is equally common among both
groups. Then there's the worry about waste: Every year the United States
spends $20 billion to wipe out drug crops in South America (a major
crop-killing occurred last week in Colombia), snag smugglers and bust users
-- none of which does much to dampen drug supply or use.

Shouldn't this matter -- that the drug war isn't working? No matter how many
smugglers the feds find or crack houses the cops raid, the motivated addict
somehow can still find a fix. And no matter how many hundreds of thousands
of addicts are caught and plunked behind bars, drug abuse remains a scourge.

Skeptical people are right to wonder: Why is this nation so eager to fight a
futile war, and so reluctant to opt for demand-control tactics that could
actually have an effect? All sorts of evidence shows that the surest and
cheapest way to diminish drug abuse is to help kids steer clear of it and to
provide treatment to those already in its grip. Even so, only 4 cents of
every antidrug dollar is spent on prevention and treatment.

This is a backwards arrangement, as more and more Americans are coming to
see. Though Minnesota seems to be moving toward handling drug use as a
public-health problem (Hennepin County boasts one of the country's leading
drug courts), too many of the state's prison beds are still kept warm by
addicts. And federal sentencing laws remain a daunting problem: Unless
they're changed, punishment will always trump treatment in federal court.

There are lots of reasons to call off the war on drugs -- to start treating
addicts as sick people rather than criminals. It's the biggest single move
America could make to reform its prisons.

But if this change is ever to occur, Americans will have to demand a shift
in public policy. That's why the Twin Cities Catholic Archdiocese has taken
the dramatic step of declaring this coming Oct. 13 "Criminal Justice
Sunday." The archdiocese is urging churches of all denominations across the
Twin Cities to talk on that day about improving society's approach to
justice.

But talk isn't enough, as the masterminds of this idea know well. Conceived
by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and members of St. Stephen's
Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Criminal Justice Sunday isn't a day for mere
lamentation. It's a day for making plans for a saner prison system -- one
that dispenses justice instead of its opposite. Twin Citians who want to
join the quest can find more detail at: http://www.ststephenscommunity.org .