WAR ON DRUGS CREATES CRIME, PRISON CHIEFS TOLD

Aug. 10 - Veteran TV anchorman Hugh Downs proclaimed his opposition to the
war on drugs Monday while addressing a convention of more than 5,400 prison
managers from across the nation and Canada.

"I'd like to see an end of the war on drugs - it is just insane,'' he said,
adding that the federal government's long-term, multibilliondollar war on
drugs has "turned a medical problem into a crime problem.'' His comment was
in response to a question from the audience after his talk.

"When you outlaw something, you put it outside the law, and criminal
elements take it over,'' said Downs, who was the keynote speaker at the
first general session of the 129th annual Congress of Correction. The
nation was "smart enough to back off'' after trying Prohibition, which made
liquor illegal in the 1920s, he said, adding that he wondered how the
government ever expects to control access to "a weed that grows wild, like
marijuana.''

Earlier, Downs, who hosted the "Today'' show for NBC and co-anchors
"20-20'' for ABC, told the prison managers that the theory that American
justice provides "a fair and impartial trial'' is misleading. "Justice can
be bent by money, race'' and other factors, he said.

On another matter, he said it is time parents resume their role as parents
rather than abdicate responsibility to television and the Internet. Parents
matter

"Now, there is a theory that parents don't matter - they just turn their
children over to television or over to the Internet. "V' chips won't solve
the problem,'' he said.

"You wouldn't send your child out on the street alone,'' so you should be
with your child during explorations of the Internet.

Before Downs spoke, the U.S. Air Force Band of the Rockies startled the
still-waking-up gathering at the Colorado Convention Center with a rousing
rendition of "The Washington Post March'' by John Philip Sousa.

Then, John Suthers, executive director of the Colorado Department of
Corrections, welcomed the group, noting that Gov. Bill Owens was in St.
Louis at a conference of governors.

Suthers, who met privately over the weekend with the directors of state
prisons in 36 other states, told the group that one of every five of
Colorado's 14,800 inmates is now in one of Colorado's four private prisons
and that his department is carefully studying the question of the proper
balance between private and state-run prisons. Workshops offered

The Congress of Correction, which opened Sunday and ends Thursday, is
organized by the American Correctional Association and is meeting at the
Hyatt Regency Denver, Denver Marriott City Center Hotel and at the Colorado
Convention Center.

The congress includes prison managers from local, state and federal
governments and private prisons and offers dozens of workshops on
everything from decisionmaking during a prison hostage case to ethics to
inmate job training to ways to attract more college graduates into the
corrections field.