PRISONS BULGE WITH DRUG OFFENDERS

With crime rates down and prison populations soaring, it's easy to
conclude that he latter has much to do with the former. America's
long-term efforts to lock up more violent criminals has, indeed,
reduced street crime. But the current prison boom has more to do with
the nation's war on drugs that on its battle against violent crime.

"No matter how much crime plummets, the United States will have to add
the equivalent of a new 1,000-bed jail or prison every week -- for
perhaps another decade," according to a New York Times article
published recently. That follows a decade in which the U.S. prison
population has nearly doubled to almost 2 million inmates.

Mandatory sentencing laws, enacted during the 1980s anti-drug frenzy,
have led to the current situation, in which 400,000 people are serving
time nationwide for drug crimes. About 60 percent of federal prisoners
are incarcerated for drug offenses -- three times the rate 15 years
ago, according to the article.

To put things in perspective, the United States Sentencing Commission
reports that the average time served in federal prisons for drug
trafficking is 82.3 months. That compares to 73.3 months for sexual
abuse, 38.8 months for assault, 34.2 months for manslaughter and 22.9
months for bribery. Federal sentencing priorities appear to be out of
order.

"We went through a period in the mid-1980s where we were just
ratcheting up drug sentences," said Kevin B. Zeese, president of
Common Sense for Drug Policy, a drug-law reform organization in Falls
Church, Va. "We put in place a system with more and more people going
to jail for longer and longer time periods."

The nation, he said, he embraced "this mandatory approach to things"
in which judges no longer have the authority to see if an individual
really is "a danger to society." People caught buying, selling or
using even small amounts of illegal drugs are hit with stiff automatic
sentences, which means that nonviolent drug users end up serving time
with hardened felons.

What should be done? In the short term, Zeese urges lawmakers to move
away from mandatory sentencing and toward a more traditional judicial
approach that looks at individual circumstances. He also calls for
shorter prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses. In the long term,
he said Americans must decide, "Which is better to control drugs: an
illegal market enforced by police or a legal market enforced by
administrative law?"

We agree. As politically dangerous as these proposals may be, they
offer a realistic alternative to an ever-expanding and costly
prison-building campaign that continues to fill the prison with drug
offenders, and not just those who are menaces to society.