FEDERAL DRUG PROSECUTIONS UP, JAIL TIME DOWN

STUDY: Critics say smaller dealers make easier targets for law
enforcement.

WASHINGTON - Convicted federal drug offenders are spending less time
behind bars, but more of them are being prosecuted, according to a
study of judicial records.

The shorter sentences, over a 1992-98 time span that includes most of
the Clinton administration, suggest that federal judges and
prosecutors are finding ways around mandatory minimum sentences
mandated by Congress to crack down on traffickers.

To some experts, the findings also suggest that federal agents are
increasingly nailing "small fry" drug offenders rather than the
kingpins whom federal agencies are uniquely suited to pursue.

"There has been an undue emphasis on the lesser figures in drug
trafficking because they're easier to convict," said Sen. Arlen
Specter, R-Pa., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The study, by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a
government performance-analysis center in Washington that is
associated with Syracuse University, found that the average federal
drug sentence dropped about 20 percent from 1992-98.

The Justice Department did not dispute the figures. "We have been
aware of this trend for several years," said spokesman John Russell.

For the Drug Enforcement Administration, which brings most drug cases
to federal courts, the average sentence dropped from 94 months in 1992
to 75 months in 1998.

Results for individual judicial districts varied dramatically.
DEA-instigated federal drug sentences in the New York City area, for
example, fell from more than 140 months in 1992 to less than 70 months
in 1998. In Southern California, however, the average sentence
increased from 51 months in 1992 to 62 months in 1998.

Nationally, the number of federal drug prosecutions rose to an
all-time high of 21,571 in 1998, up 16 percent from 1992.

DEA and the U.S. Customs Service remain strongly focused on marijuana.
In 1998, convictions involving marijuana totaled 34 percent of their
drug cases, compared with 28 percent for powder cocaine and 17 percent
for crack cocaine.

To rate a five-year mandatory federal drug sentence, a trafficker
would have to be dealing more than 100 kilos of marijuana compared
with 500 grams of cocaine.