WILLIE HORTON, R.I.P

LOS ANGELES — The real drug question that George W. Bush needs to answer in
this campaign is not whether he used cocaine 25 years ago, but whether he
will end the hypocrisy and posturing that have have replaced common sense in
debating drug policy in this country.

If the Texas governor, like millions of Americans, experimented with drugs
in his youth and has now grown up to be a responsible citizen who might be
president of the United States, then that might suggest to some that the
mere use of illegal drugs does not set one on an irreversible life of crime.
But federal and state law operate on exactly the opposite assumption, not
because criminologists support it, but because politicians are afraid to
oppose it.

Reports issued this week found that the number of Americans enmeshed in the
criminal justice system in prison, on probation or on parole has reached
record highs, as have the number of Americans incarcerated in state and
federal prisons. One of the primary reasons for the steady increases of the
past two decades, notwithstanding falling crime rates, are the laws imposing
mandatory sentences for possession as well as distribution of drugs — laws
adopted by Congress and the state legislatures, and signed into law by
governors including George W. Bush.

At the same time, the disparity in the mandatory sentences between crack
cocaine and powdered cocaine — use of the same amount of crack cocaine
results in a sentence as much as 10 times longer than use of powdered
cocaine — is one of the major factors that has undermined the confidence of
minorities in the criminal justice system, since it is poor minorities who
disproportionately use crack, and middle-class whites who use cocaine.

According to the newly released figures, there were more than 1.8 million
men and women behind bars in the United States last year, representing an
incarceration rate of 672 inmates per 100.000 U.S. residents, a rate higher
than that of any other country except Russia. A total of 5.9 million adult
Americans were under police supervision — either in prison, on probation or
on parole — which amounts to about one of every 34 adults.

But the truly shocking numbers are apparent when the impact on the minority
community is measured. Thanks in significant part to the drug laws, upward
of 40 percent of all black men in this country between the ages of 18 and 25
are either in prison, on parole or on probation.

Some years ago, the conservative Cato Institute did a landmark study
confirming what most serious students of the criminal justice system have
long thought to be true: that using scarce and expensive prison beds to lock
up drug users and drug couriers does not in fact reduce crime, but instead
puts pressure on the system to lock up violent criminals for shorter periods
in order to make room for nonviolent drug users.

Some years ago, the Sentencing Commission responsible for implementation of
the federal guidelines on sentencing recommended to Congress that the
disparity between sentences for crack and powdered cocaine be eliminated.
But Congress has refused to act on the commission recommendations.

The Cato report, carefully researched though it was, has been all but
ignored by policymakers, who continue to support ever more draconian
sentences for drug use. The condemnation of mandatory drug laws by even the
most conservative judges has carried no more weight. Modest proposals for
the medicinal use of marijuana have been roundly condemned by elected
officials of both parties, while voters have overwhelmingly supported them.

Why? What are politicians so afraid of? The answer can be summarized in two
words: Willie Horton. For anyone who has forgotten, Willie Horton was the
convicted murderer from Massachusetts, who while on a weekend furlough raped
and beat a woman in Maryland.

In the 1988 presidential campaign, Willie Horton was used by Republican
George Bush as a symbol of his opponent's supposed softness on crime. The
lesson of that campaign was that no politician would make the mistake
Michael Dukakis did, of treating crime as a question of policy rather than a
measure of values.

In the years since, the debate about crime has strayed further and further
from questions of sound public policy, and the prison population has
continued to grow as a result. Twelve years later, public opinion polls
suggest that most Americans are fully capable of understanding that
prevention is as important as punishment, and that not all drug users
deserve to spend 10 years in prison, but politicians refuse to trust them.

Perhaps George W. Bush will be different — charges of hypocrisy will
certainly be raised if he isn't. It would certainly be fitting if the ghost
of Willie Horton were finally laid to rest by a presidential candidate by
the name of George Bush.