MY TURN

IT'S TIME TO OPEN THE DOORS OF OUR PRISONS

Freeing first-time offenders is the compassionate answer. It also makes good
economic sense.

Americans, once so kind-hearted, have become lusty punishers. Since
President Nixon's "war" on crime, the public has become increasingly
intolerant of wrongdoers, a group with no lobbyists or spin doctors to look
out for them. In the late 1960s, America, like most of the rest of the
world, forsook capital punishment. Since reviving it almost a decade later,
we have executed more than 500 people. Now governors brag about the number
of death warrants they sign.

The U.S. prison population, 1.2 million not counting short-term jail
inmates, is the largest in the Western world. A number of states are
spending more on prisons than on schools, and along with the federal
government are turning some of their prisoners over to private custody--so
that skimping on accommodations directly boosts stockholders' dividends.
Lawmakers trample one another to pose as tough crimefighters, and mandatory
minimums force judges to hand out long sentences, sometimes life,
automatically upon conviction. Parole programs have atrophied.

The situation is aggravated by America's hysteria over drugs.
Self-administered opiates (heroin and morphine) and cocaine together cause
fewer than 8,500 deaths per year--compared with tobacco, 430,000, and
alcohol, 100,000 dead, plus millions drunk in the gutter or otherwise
incapacitated. I don't think marijuana has ever killed anyone.

Yet the White House campaign to be "drug free" not only costs billions, but
concentrates on prohibition and punishment at the expense of notably cheaper
and more effective treatment. The elaborate U.S. campaign to compel
drug-crop growers abroad to give up their livelihoods is one of the most
fatuous national efforts ever undertaken. Imagine Turks and Andeans trying
to keep Yankee farmers from growing their truly deadly tobacco!

Nearly all the nation's prison systems are overcrowded, many critically. In
state and federal prisons, more than half of all inmates are serving their
time for nonviolent offenses. Some 30 percent are first offenders. African-
Americans are a grossly disproportionate 49 percent. Drug-law convictions
account for almost one fourth, and nearly one third of these are for simple
possession. Genuine hardship cases abound, with stunning sentences for minor
wrongs, the separation of parents and young children and a wide
disproportion among convictions for identical offenses.

After working for many years in the development of criminal law, I've become
increasingly concerned about our clogged prison system. My proposal to
relieve the problem is simple: systematic use of pardon and commutation
powers to clear out worthy first-offense long-termers to make room for
serious felons. It should stir compassion and appeal to common sense. But
there is another consideration that Americans may understand even better:
costs. At an estimated $20,000 per year to hold each prisoner, we are
spending more than $25 billion annually for simple, nonproductive
warehousing of convicted offenders.

Altogether, our annual layout for corrections is more than $35 billion,
curving steadily upward even as crime rates drop. We are developing a
powerful "prison-industrial complex," a national growth industry exploiting
today's hostility toward wrongdoers. There is scant evidence that long
prison terms alone are causing the drop. Most observers credit other factors
such as progress in reducing poverty, the improved economy, tighter gun laws
and the increasing average age of the population. Criminologists agree that
Wisdom about-to-be lawbreakers don't look up penalties in the law books;
they plan, if at all, on how to avoid being caught.

Every system for administering justice has, since ancient times, included
some provision for tempering punishment, usually a power to pardon and
commute sentences, vested in the executive. Royal pardons were well known to
most of our European forebears. American presidents draw the power directly
from the Constitution, and every state governor enjoys some such
prerogative. Historically, the power has been freely, often liberally used,
sometimes to grant amnesty to entire classes of offenders.

So I urge an immediate review of all sentences now being served in order to
identify nonviolent first offenders held for disproportionately long terms,
to release those who have paid their debts to society and are good risks,
and to make room for menacing recidivists and other serious offenders.

There would inevitably be a few Willie Hortons, but the process might be
designed to include further screening in each case. Release should be
strictly conditioned on good behavior and other factors where appropriate.

The president could initiate such a program simply by directive, or Congress
could set up a new authority for it. And any governor or state legislature
could give it a try. I only need to convince enough economy-minded people
that some of the nation's prison-budget billions could be better spent
elsewhere. Perhaps I've convinced you.