U.S. LAW ENFORCEMENT IS SURGING

Federal law enforcement is on the rise, the first comprehensive gathering
of federal arrest figures shows.

Fueled by drug-law enforcement and greater efforts to curtail illegal
immigration, the number of federal criminal court cases rose nearly 13
percent from 1997 to 1998.

Federal agents arrested 106,139 people in 1998, according to Justice
Department statistics.

Almost half of those apprehended were for drug law or immigration violations.

More than 43,000 people were sent to federal prisons that year, for an
average sentence of almost five years.

The figures were released Wednesday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

There were 83,000 federal law-enforcement officers in 1998, including
33,000 in four Justice Department agencies that conduct nearly three out of
four federal criminal investigations: the FBI, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S.
Marshals Service.

That number has risen steadily since 1993, when there were 69,000 federal
agents, with about 24,000 of them in the DEA, FBI and immigration and
marshals services.

In one year, from 1997 to 1998, the number of people brought to trial in
federal court rose from 69,351 to 78,172, a 12.7 percent increase.

Of those, 87 percent were convicted, usually as a result of a guilty plea.

The last decade has seen a steady rise in the percentage of those convicted
in federal court who go to prison.

In 1998, 71 percent of those found guilty were incarcerated, compared with
just 60 percent in 1990.

The average sentence for the 43,041 convicted in federal court was four
years, 11 months.

Some analysts and legal experts see in the statistics a confirmation of the
"federalization" of law enforcement in America.

"Under our constitutional system, the federal government is supposed to
have a very limited crime-fighting role," said Tim Lynch, an analyst with
the Cato Institute, a libertarian foundation in Washington. "But for the
past 20 years, it seems every session of Congress has escalated the drug
war, and that has led to an increase in federal agents, and federal prisons
and the federal court system."

Edward Mallett, a Houston lawyer and the incoming president of the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said, "What is being reported here
is pretty much what one would expect. . . . The federalization of some
formerly state offenses accounts for some of this."

Mallett said that in Texas, as the number of federal law-enforcement agents
involved in anti-drug and anti-immigration activities has grown, the
threshold for triggering a federal crime has fallen.

"Cases federal prosecutors would have declined a year ago they are
prosecuting now," he said. "They used to turn down drug prosecutions under
five kilos; now they'll prosecute for an ounce and a half. They're looking
for work."

Since 1990, the number of people being held in federal jails awaiting trial
or deportation has grown rapidly from just over 140,000 to more than 200,000.

The number of inmates in federal prison is up more than 90 percent for the
same period, from 57,000 to 109,000.