PRISON REFORM MEANS CALLING HALT TO 'WAR ON DRUGS'

WASHINGTON -- If ever there were a golden moment to reform America's prison
policy -- 2 million people incarcerated -- that time should be now.

The economy's booming, creating strong demand for workers, rehabilitated
convicts included. Crime rates are dropping rapidly. We're feeling a touch
of shame about leading the civilized world in prisoners.

It's true our prisons hold hundreds of thousands of dangerous individuals,
people convicted of quite heinous violent crimes.

Even if a handful were wrongly convicted -- note the recent concerns about
some innocents held on death rows -- we're justifiably nervous about
premature releases.

But behind bars, too, are lots of men (and increasingly women) caught
possessing or handling small amounts of drugs. Many now face years, often
decades, of incarceration for those infractions.

In federal prisons, the average drug offender spends more time imprisoned
(82.2 months) than rapists (73.3 months).

In California, more inmates are doing life -- their natural life -- for
marijuana possession than for murder, rape and robbery combined.

Here's a possible reform agenda:

Overhaul sentencing to decide who we're afraid of, and who we're just mad
at. Imprison the proven criminals we have reason to fear.

Find alternative ways -- from halfway houses to community service to drug
treatment -- to chastise and then treat the rest.

Sentencing reform means doing away with the mandatory sentencing, the
''three strikes and you're out'' laws of the "80s and "90s. Legislatures
should write future sentencing guidelines focused less on punishment, more
on averting crime. Example: letting judges use statistical data that show
which types of prisoners respond best to which sentences or treatments.

Reinvent and reinvest in probation and parole.

This idea's championed by criminologist John DiIulio, who supported much of
the "90s prison buildup. Probation and parole fail, he notes, because
officers have unrealistic caseloads and are paid poorly.

Recidivism could likely be cut way back by investing adequate funds, cutting
caseloads, and then judging various probation and parole practices by their
actual effectiveness in stopping repeat crime.

Stop chasing drug addicts. America's massive ''war on drugs'' is an abysmal
failure.

Even with multibillion dollar budgets and military power, it can't interdict
more than 1 percent or so of the illegal drugs flowing into the United
States. It can't stop the flow to the streets, where drugs are cheaper than
ever.

It rarely catches the big dealers; usually it snares small-time operators,
very poor people often addicted and personally maladjusted. Then it throws
them into the slammer for an obscene number of years.

Which drugs are truly dangerous, to users and society?

Tobacco takes a yearly death toll of 390,000 Americans, alcohol 80,000,
cocaine 2,200, heroin 2,000, aspirin 2,000 and marijuana zero (no proven
deaths, at least on its own).

Combine all illegal drugs and the direct death toll is under 5,000 Americans
a year, according to National Institute of Drug Abuse reports.

The danger to society isn't the illegal drugs; it's chasing down their
users, criminalizing addiction.

The last time we had prohibition -- against alcohol early in the 20th
century -- attendant violence, including murders, also hit record highs.

Treat drug addicts -- don't make them wait months, years for care as we do
now. Studies show people who get treatment are four times less likely to
commit another drug crime.

Rand Corp. research calculated that spending on treatment reduces serious
crime 15 times more than expanding mandatory prison terms.

While we've poured billions into new prisons, most drug treatment programs,
whether in communities or behind bars, remain woefully underfunded.

For the $450,000 it typically costs to arrest, convict and imprison a drug
dealer for five years, drug treatment or education can be provided for about
200 people, according to the Drug Reform Coordination Network.

We should switch out dollars, to where real results await.

Go after root causes. Why do we have serious crime, drug affliction? Some
degree of bestial behavior is a constant among humans. But it's also true,
as prison hard-liner DiIulio has noted, that America records 1 million
substantiated cases of child abuse yearly.

Sixteen percent of our children are impoverished, 40 percent are without a
father in the home.

Neighborhood, church, school-based programs can help some of these young
people and need much more serious support-like the ''settlement houses'' for
poor families a century ago. Quality community policing can make a
difference.

Faith-based efforts, including the ''restorative justice'' programs pushed
by Charles Colson and others, open a window on helping people already caught
in crime's web.

America could, in short, reduce its crime problem dramatically, just by
caring to make the extra effort.

What we now know, conclusively, is that more prisons are not the answer.