DRUG CASES ARE SWELLING STATE PRISONS, STUDY SHOWS

SAN FRANCISCO - 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 yesterday.

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

The study relied on statistics from the Justice Department, Census Bureau
and the National Corrections Reporting Program. It looked at 37 states from
1986 to 1996, which the report called "the most punishing decade in our
nation's history."

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

"It's a compilation 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 also is financing the initiatives, which California and Massachusetts
voters will decide in November.

While the study appeared critical of America's drug policy, the White House
Office of Drug Control Policy said its 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,"
McCaffrey spokesman Bob Weiner said.