CLERGY ASKS CLINTON FOR A FINAL ACT

Religious Leaders Call For Clemency For Thousands Of Imprisoned
Nonviolent Drug Offenders.

Dec. 22, 2000 -- SAN FRANCISCO -- With time running out on the
Clinton presidency, a group of religious leaders has come together to
plead for the freedom of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders. The
group, which calls itself the Coalition for Jubilee Clemency, has
sent a letter to President Clinton, signed by more than 600 religious
leaders, asking him to consider commuting what they view as unfair
sentences.

"Before William Jefferson Clinton leaves office on January 20, 2001
he should establish, as part of his legacy, demonstrable acts that
show he stood for justice by freeing thousands of federal prisoners
sentenced unjustly," the letter says. The call for clemency comes
amid signs that the drug war zeitgeist is in flux. Steven
Soderbergh's new movie "Traffic," starring Michael Douglas and
Catherine Zeta-Jones, hits theaters over the holidays, just in time
for Oscar consideration. It's one of the few Hollywood films to
preach that thewar on drugs is unwinnable.

Last week, Debra Saunders, a conservative columnist for the San
Francisco Chronicle, penned a column endorsing the coalition's move,
writing that "this should be the perfect time for President Clinton
to commute the sentences of low-level nonviolent drug offenders in
federal prison."

During the recent congressional elections, Republican Senate
candidate Tom Campbell's criticism of the war on drugs was a
centerpiece of his campaign. "Recovering Republican" columnist
Arianna Huffington has made reforming America's drug-sentencing laws
her new crusade. And New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican, has
called for the complete decriminalization of drugs.

Though Campbell was shellacked in his race against incumbent Democrat
Dianne Feinstein, California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop. 36,
which would require people arrested for nonviolent drug offenses to
be sent to drug treatment centers instead of jail or prison. The
measure was opposed by nearly every law enforcement group in the
state but passed with 61 percent of the vote.

But Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation remains
pessimistic that the battle against the war on drugs will be won on
moral grounds. Though he acknowledges that the backlash against the
drug war is growing, he says he doesn't think "it's reached a tipping
point yet. I could be mistaken. If our economy were to go into a
serious recession and the talk of our great surplus ceased, people
might look more profoundly at the economics here. People are aware
that the war of drugs has been a colossal waste of money."

Sterling says the coalition is focusing its efforts on getting
Clinton to act before he leaves office: On "Jan. 20, the political
reality is transfigured, so to speak," he says. "Mr. Clinton has the
constitutional authority to act without the support of Congress. We
believe his historical legacy regarding incarceration can be
ameliorated here."

During Clinton's presidency, the federal prison population has
swelled from 73,000 to more than 146,000. Sterling estimates that
roughly 24,000 of these prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders. He
bases his estimates on an extrapolation of statistics provided in a
1994 analysis of the federal prison population by the Department of
Justice.

"It could be a little more, could be less," Sterling says. "Even if
we're off by a few thousand, it's still more than at any time in
history."

Yet the political obstacles to reforming the criminal justice system
and drug sentencing laws remain formidable. For example, an enormous
battle has erupted in California over the implementation of Prop. 36.
"There are already some efforts to divert money away from treatment
and into the courts," says Scott Ehlers, spokesman for Americans for
Medical Rights, which sponsored the California initiative. "We're
trying to make sure that drug treatment is the first priority."

The initiative had a powerful, bipartisan group of opponents,
including law enforcement groups, Gov. Gray Davis, the powerful
prison guards union and White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey. "It's
never hurt us to have McCaffery come out against one of our
initiatives," Ehlers says. "He represents the status quo on American
drug policy. Obviously, the American public does not agree with how
the drug war is being run."

But while McCaffery and others, like California Attorney General Bill
Lockyer, opposed Prop. 36, they have been supportive of its
philosophical thrust.

"He has had some good things to say -- that we can't arrest our way
out of the drug problem, that we need to provide some more drug
treatment," Ehlers says of McCaffery. "The problem is, his actions
don't follow his words. We've seen more arrests for drug offenses by
the Clinton administration than by any other. They continue to try to
incarcerate our way out of our drug problem."

McCaffery's office did not return calls seeking comment.

While Lockyer has voiced support in the past for drug treatment as an
alternative to prison, he was unequivocal in his opposition to the
ballot measure. "Prop. 36 will destroy California's highly effective
drug court system and effectively decriminalize hardcore drugs in
California," Lockyer said before the vote on the initiative.

The clergy's movement may run into similar problems. In a recent
Rolling Stone interview, Clinton said that sentences "in many [drug]
cases are too long for nonviolent offenders," but indicated it was
too late for him to act.

Clinton spokesman Mark Kitchens said the White House had received the
group's letter, but "at this time we don't have anything to say or
comment on it."

Ehlers holds out hope that the drug laws might be changed during
George W. Bush's presidency, even though Texas had the
fastest-growing prison population in America on Bush's watch. "It's
long been my contention that for the drug war to end, it's going to
have to be ended by Republicans and not Democrats," he said. "It took
Richard Nixon to go to China and it'll take a Republican to end the
drug war."