MANDATORY SENTENCS FORCING ALTERNATIVES TO JAIL TIME

Rebecca Slater spent 15 years of her adult life on probation or behind bars
for an array of criminal offenses: possession of crack cocaine, prostitution
and larceny, among others.

Conservative estimates suggest that from 1982 to 1997 Slater cost taxpayers
more than $225,000 96 annual costs for probation and incarceration that
exclude the fiscal penalties of petty crimes. However, the Ludlow resident
recently celebrated her first drug and crime-free year in over a decade.

What's more her salvation was free of charge.

"After years of no progress I got into a 12-step program and that was the
answer. Every crime I had ever committed was related to my addiction," she
said. "I needed treatment, not jail."

Supporters of mandatory minimum drug sentences say more jail time is exactly
what Slater needed when she began using crack cocaine and committing crimes.
When the laws were enacted in 1986 by Congress, they were championed as the
ultimate solution to counter the prospering drug trade that swept the
country during the early to mid-1980s.

But statistics indicate that mandatory minimum drug sentences have failed
96 at least from a financial standpoint, and possibly as a deterrent to
drug crimes as well. The federal Justice Department's budget increased from
$4 billion in 1986 to $21 billion in 1998 as the government hired more
judges, prosecutors and investigators, and built tens of thousands of new
prison cells.

Nevertheless, it seems the demand for illegal drugs has not budged.

"I'm seeing more addicts and HIV-positive cases than ever. If drug use is
down, I don't see it," said Ellen Miller Mack, a nurse practitioner who
provides medical care at a Springfield health clinic and for female inmates
at the Hampden County House of Corrections at Stony Brook.

A recent study published by the RAND Corporation's Drug Policy Research
Center showed that drug treatment is six times more effective at reducing
drug use than imposing mandatory minimums; research also showed treatment is
millions of dollars cheaper than pursuing lengthy sentences for drug crimes.

Despite a slow awakening within the justice system to the potency of
substance abuse treatment, local prison officials are still feeling the
squeeze of mandatory minimums. J. John Ashe, superintendent of the Hampden
County jail in Ludlow, is watching his own prison population with a cautious
eye.

"We opened in 1992 with 1,110 beds and we're approaching 2,000 inmates for
the millennium ... the cavalry hasn't come yet," he quipped.

Ashe said the facility spends up to $35,000 per year to house each inmate
and $120,000 to build each new cell. He attributes the great swell in the
jail's population, in part, to mandatory sentences for minor drug crimes.

Many of the inmates incarcerated under the school zone law, which penalizes
offenders with a mandatory two-year sentence for distributing small amounts
of drugs within 1,000 feet of a school or park, would otherwise be eligible
for less expensive intermediate sanctions.

These sanctions include alternatives such as participation at the Community
Corrections Center on York Street in Springfield. Most participants at the
center are required to wear electronic monitors and receive intensive drug
treatment coupled with frequent drug testing, vocational training, job
placement and additional education.

Candidates for community corrections are non-violent offenders with short
criminal histories who can usually trace most of their run-ins with the law
to substance abuse.

Ashe said that a great percentage of school zone offenders in Hampden County
fits this profile. A study he conducted earlier this year of 41 pre-trial
inmates who were being prosecuted under the school zone law showed that at
least two-thirds would have received no jail time under the sentencing
guidelines that are used by the state's superior court.

The district attorney's office has only recently begun to evaluate school
zone offenders as possible candidates for intermediate sanctions.
Prosecutors call the strategy "coerced treatment."

At $6,500, participation in the Community Corrections Center carries an
annual price tag far lower than that of incarceration and produces a lower
recidivism rate than conventional prisons.

"For a long time the philosophy of corrections was either aspirin or
intensive care. These programs bridge that huge gap. A colleague of mine
calls intermediate sanctions hard street time 96 punishment that allows
offenders to remain in their communities," said Kevin Warwick, assistant
superintendent of community corrections.

Aside from the financial effects of long-term jail sentences, there are
other damages linked with mass incarceration.

Slater's daughter, Lisa Reisner, 19, recalls the dejection and humiliation
she felt when visiting her mother in jail.

"Our relationship was shaky before she went away and when I was forced to
visit her in jail ... I had to go through metal detectors and try to bond
with her in a room crowded with other inmates. It was never the same after
that."

The most recent count shows that Reisner is one of 1.5 million children who
have a parent in jail. Although Reisner was able to live with her maternal
grandmother while her mother battled addiction and served jail time,
hundreds of thousands of other children of addicts and convicts end up in
foster care.

Foster care for one child costs taxpayers between $15,000 and $20,000 a year.

"It's all a numbers game," said Michelle Douglas, director of the Neil J.
Houston House in Roxbury, a progressive residential program that serves as
an alternative to prison for pregnant women and mothers of
infants.

Non-violent female offenders, many of them convicted of drug crimes, are
able to serve their time and care for their children under the same roof.
The facility is secure and offers drug treatment, and parenting and life
skills classes.

Throughout the years when Slater was on the streets, she only narrowly
escaped being sentenced to a mandatory minimum sentence. It was sheer, dumb
luck, she said.

"It could have been me getting busted for getting high in a school zone a
million times," said Slater. "Or delivering drugs for some guy so I could
get some. I met a bunch of women inside (jail) who got mandatory minimums
just because they were trying to score or help their boyfriends."

Critics of alternatives say some will continue to commit crimes at any cost,
including involving children. In Northampton last week, police broke up what
they called a large crack cocaine operation involving three female suspects
who allegedly used a 13- and 15-year-old to deliver the drug.

And supporters of mandatory sentences say they have widespread support from
a public fed up with crime.

"My husband is a police officer, and everybody always gives the police a
hard time for the revolving door system," Patricia Poindexter of Springfield
said. "Now, we have ways to put people in jail and some people want them
back out on the streets again. It doesn't make any sense."

Just a few weeks ago Hampden County launched a community corrections track
specific to women. The female model works much like the original program and
may include electronic monitoring and drug testing, but also offers women a
separate space to take a long, hard look at the paths that led them to their
first arrests.

"Women tend to do better in treatment when they are separated out from the
men," said Warwick.

Kate DeCou, director of the women's unit at the Ludlow jail, said the
corrections industry is gradually accepting that women prisoners are a
special population with special needs. Very few are violent, and most
women act out as a result of a history of physical and sexual abuse, which
manifests itself through drug abuse, prostitution, and other less
victim-related crimes.

"I think women should be held accountable for their crimes, but we need more
resources that address the issue that brought women into the prison system
in the first place, said DeCou.

"Many more women prisoners have a higher incidence of serious mental illness
and substance abuse. Women often commit crimes to mask the pain of earlier
trauma."

The number of women and minorities incarcerated under mandatory sentencing
laws is among the reasons the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission 96 which
includes the chief justice of the state superior court system, prosecutors
and defense lawyers 96 has proposed alternative sentencing guidelines.
Massachusetts legislators could review the proposal as early as this month.
Rebecca Slater has a new outlook on life since getting clean, but she is not
without scars. Neither is her daughter.

Slater was diagnosed as HIV-positive while serving time in 1996. Her
relationship with her daughter will never compare to that of a mother and
daughter who have lived life without the slings and arrows of crack and
jail-time.

"We will never have the traditional mother and daughter thing. Never, ever,"
said Reisner.

Slater and her daughter plan to speak out at a rally which will take place
Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. at Court Square in Springfield, part of a national
campaign called "Mothers in Prison, Children in Crisis." Slater hopes that
she and her daughter can help raise public and legislative awareness about
alternatives to incarceration.

Although her cause is gaining attention and there are more people who are
speaking out in support of alternatives to doing time, leaders in local
corrections facilities wonder if and when the concept will gain
acceptance among legislators and the general public.

"It took us five years to get the funding and the support to open our
Community Corrections Center," said Ashe. "People just feel more comfortable
if people are locked up."