DRUG OFFENDERS PUT IN JAIL AT RECORD RATE, STUDY SAYS

SAN FRANISCO--The number of drug offenders in many state prisons tripled
from 1986 to 1996, even when adjusting for population growth, according to
a report issued Thursday.

The study by the liberal think tank Justice Policy Institute also said that
the number of blacks jailed on drug charges had quintupled during the
10-year period.

The study relied on statistics from the Justice Department, Census Bureau
and the National Corrections Reporting Program. The stats looked at 37
states from 1986 to 1996.

Franklin Zimring, a criminal justice expert and University of
California-Berkeley law professor, said the numbers were not new.

"It's a compliation of statistics that have been carefully culled," he
said. "But still, what the statistics show is astonishing."

From 1985 to 1993, Zimring said, the prison population exploded in "a
simple response to enormous political pressures and a politics-induced
moral panic in the United States."

The study-funded in part by financier George Soros' Open Society
Institute-endorses two state ballot initiatives aimed at sending many drug
offenders to rehabilitation and diversion programs instead of prison. Soros
is also financing the initiatives, which California and Massachusetts
voters will decide in November.

While the study appeared critical of America's durg policy over the last
few years, the White House Office of Drug Control Policy said the study's
points were in line with drug czar Barry McCaffrey's goals.

"The institute may be talking in terms of imprisonment, but over the same
period of time, drug use has gone down and crime is at an all-time low,"
said McCaffrey's spokesman.