NEW SENTENCING RULES TAKE EFFECT IN DISTRICT

When prisoners arrested over the weekend walk out of the lockup in the
basement of D.C. Superior Court tomorrow morning, they will face a
startling new sentencing system, the biggest change in the D.C. criminal
justice system in 30 years.

Gone are negotiations about a two-to six-year sentence for, say, minor
league drug distribution. Forget parole: It no longer exists. Think you'll
serve time at Lorton? Think again: From now on, everybody does time in a
federal facility.

The changes, which took effect one minute after midnight Friday but won't
be felt until court opens tomorrow morning, are the much-debated,
much-awaited overhaul of the District's sentencing system ordered by the
1997 National Capital Revitalization Act. In that bill, the federal
government took over many District agencies, such as criminal justice, that
would be state-level functions if the District were a state.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys still may negotiate plea-bargain
sentences but for a set number of years rather than a range of years.

That meant that the District had to convert to "truth in sentencing"
standards, a 1987 Reagan administration creation that eliminated parole and
the bracket of years to which convicted criminals could be sentenced. They
were replaced by sentences with a set term of years, so that even the
best-behaved inmates have to serve 85 percent of their terms before being
eligible for release. Twenty-nine states--plus the District, as of
yesterday--have converted to the system.

"This is a huge, extremely significant change," said Laura Hankins, special
litigation counsel for the D.C. Public Defender Service. "It alters every
conversation we'll have with our clients, because they'll have to calculate
their possible sentence in a whole new way."

This "determinant" sentencing system, which takes power from the parole
board about when to release inmates and invests it in judges, is not
supposed to result in longer sentences. But the mathematics of translating
complex criminal sentences from one system to another falls into the higher
ranges of some unwritten calculus, and some members of the bench are
apprehensive about how to implement their new powers fairly.

"Some judges have a lot of questions about it, and a lot of us may do more
stumbling than judges are comfortable with," said Michael L. Rankin,
presiding judge of Superior Court's criminal division. "There's no mystery
to the mechanics. The art comes in trying to impose a determinant sentence
that is very much like the range of sentences we impose now."

Here is what the act, developed over three years by two different
commissions and approved by the D.C. Council, actually does:

* Eliminates parole for people convicted of crimes committed after Aug. 5.
Parole is replaced with a shorter, more intensive period of "supervised
release." Instead of spending a decade or more under parole's loosely
structured oversight, released inmates will undergo a tightly monitored
transition into the community, including drug testing and rehabilitative
job training. Most inmates will be in the program for up to three years.
For inmates serving sentences of 25 years or more, the term is five years.

* Eliminates the D.C. Parole Commission. The agency's duties are given to
the U.S. Parole Commission, which will oversee inmates convicted of crimes
that occurred before Aug. 5.

* Gives judges power to determine an inmate's entire incarceration.
Previously, the judge set a framework of prison time--say, three to nine
years--and the D.C. Parole Commission determined the release date. Now the
judge imposes a single number, and there is no negotiation about early release.

* Gradually closes Lorton, a process already underway. Future inmates will
be sent to federal prisons.

Judges, court officers and city officials say the system is not intended to
enhance the District's reputation for imposing harsh sentences. But
prisoner advocates worry that will be the effect, partly because of a lack
of clear information about how much time inmates currently serve for
particular offenses, but also because of officials' worries about being
perceived by the public as soft on crime.

Several judges interviewed for this story offered such examples: A
high-profile defendant in a violent case is convicted. The range of
incarceration would, under the old system, be 10 to 30 years. Judges and
court officers know from long experience that most inmates actually serve
about 12 years of such a sentence before being paroled.

Now, under the new guidelines, to impose a 12-year sentence--not even half
the maximum--sounds soft.

"It would appear a certain way," said Frederick H. Weisberg, the Superior
Court judge who chaired the panel that devised the new law. "There's a
pressure, no doubt, to avoid that sort of appearance."

Less dramatic but more common are the cases that form the bulk of the
court's daily business, the two-to-six-year sentences for drug
distribution, the three-to-nines for assault with a deadly weapon. Research
from the Urban Institute shows that in the District, most inmates serve
about 27 months of a two-to-six-year sentence.

"To impose that sentence now is going to appear like you're on the bottom
end of sentences," said Eric Lotke, director of the D.C. Prisoners' Legal
Services Project. "Our worry is that judges, being naturally centrist and
prudent, are going to feel a pull toward the middle and above. Imposing a
four-year sentence on a two-to-six sounds nice, fair, right down the
middle. It's also increasing the average time served by more than a year
and a half."