2 MILLION PRISONERS

Incarceration Rate Shows We're Doing Something Wrong

As we enter the new millennium, the population of
America's prisons and jails is approaching two million. It will pass
that mark, according to the Justice Policy Institute in Washington,
around Feb. 15.

In the entire world about eight million people are incarcerated, so a
quarter of them are in this country.

The number of prisoners has been growing at an extraordinary pace, up
70 percent in the last 10 years. We have overtaken Russia for the
honor of having the world's highest incarceration rate.

All this has a profound social cost. Since 1995 the states have spent
more on prison than on university construction. Operating prisons in
the year 2000 will cost about $40 billion.

And of course it is not just the money. Two-thirds of the prisoners
are there for nonviolent offenses. Chances are good that by the time
they are released -- after sentences that are among the longest
anywhere -- they will be thoroughly brutalized.

The figures are so stunning that even some experts known for taking a
hard line on crime think it is time for a reappraisal of criminal
justice policies. One is Prof. John J. DiIulio Jr. of Princeton. He
summed up his view in The Wall Street Journal in March under the
headline "Two Million Prisoners Are Enough."

"The value of imprisonment is a portrait in the law of rapidly
diminishing returns," Professor DiIulio said. He noted that
correctional costs were squeezing money for policing. He urged
officials everywhere to maintain gains in public safety "while keeping
the prison population around two million and even aiming to reduce it
over the next decade."

To that end he suggested, first, repealing mandatory-minimum drug
sentencing laws. Since 1973 the Rockefeller drug laws in New York
State have imposed fixed terms running from 15 years to life for all
kinds of offenses. Federal laws also include many mandatory minimums.

The result of fixed sentences is to put hundreds of thousands of
nonviolent drug offenders away for many years, at great cost to them
and to us. About a quarter of those in American prisons and jails are
drug violators, according to the Justice Policy Institute. Their
number has gone up sevenfold in the last 20 years.

Professor DiIulio called for the release of nonviolent offenders
imprisoned only for drug violations. He also urged that drug treatment
be required for users, in prison and afterward.

Legislation that requires extremely long sentences for drug and some
other crimes is a political phenomenon of the last 25 years or so. Few
politicians, state or national, have been willing to challenge the
mantra of "toughness on crime" -- willing to look at the harsh
consequences of such rigidity, human and societal.

Mandatory-minimum sentences seem to me to reflect the delusion that
eliminating the element of judgment will make the criminal justice
system work better. Absolute rules assure certainty. But they also
assure injustice.

Leaving too much discretion to judges risks uneven sentences. Leaving
none produces equally harsh sentences for situations and individuals
that demand different treatment. The same delusion mars the 1996
Immigration Act, with its requirement of automatic deportation for
minor crimes.

The other distinctive feature of criminal justice in the United States
is capital punishment. All other Western countries have given it up as
an atavistic barbarity. It continues here despite a growing number of
releases of death-row prisoners after last-minute proof of their innocence.

Study after study has shown that executions do not deter further
murders. Yet George W. Bush has defended the death penalty on the
ground that it "will save other innocent lives."

As governor of Texas, Mr. Bush has presided over 113 executions, more
than any other governor in modern times. A compelling Boston Globe
story by John Aloysius Farrell pointed out that in the next five weeks
Governor Bush must deal with five more scheduled deaths, one of a
prisoner with a mental age of 7, two others who committed their crimes
as juveniles.

Mr. Bush's action in those cases, and the public reaction, will tell
much about his and our humanity.