TIME TO MODIFY WAR ON DRUGS

AT the rate we're going, we'll have 2 million people behind bars next year,
half of them African Americans.

While the prison bulge is credited as the biggest factor in reducing crime
by, thankfully, taking the worst criminals out of circulation, calls are
being made to refocus the war against drugs on treatment and prevention, not
just incarceration.

Drug offenses are the largest single category of crimes for which federal
prison inmates are serving, and about one-quarter of state prison inmates
are drug offenders, according to the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.,
group critical of the trend toward harsher sentencing of criminals.

With African Americans making up more than half of state and federal
prisoners, the question also is being reasonably asked whether they're
disproportionately prosecuted.

While it's true that many prisoners are violent and vicious, there are also
many hundreds of thousands of low-level, nonviolent offenders who may
benefit from treatment for drug abuse, or from learning to read, who may yet
be persuaded to straighten out their lives.

Critics who argue that wholesale incarceration does nothing but raise the
cost of the drug war worry that unless we re-examine the situation we'll be
locked into what they call the prison industrial complex, which costs about
$25 billion a year, or $250 for every household in the country.

As it is, California has almost 160,000 prisoners -- about twice the
population of Alameda -- more than any other state.

One big reason for that, besides California's huge population, is the length
of sentences, some experts say.

The "Three Strikes, You're Out" law is having its effect, and there isn't
much support for reducing sentences. A proposal to modify the law by
requiring a third strike to be a felony is under consideration in the state
Senate.

In the meantime, efforts are being made to gauge the will for reviewing
mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, to reduce the prison bulge.

To this end, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., last week introduced a bill in the
House of Representatives to restore discretion to judges to set aside
mandatory minimum sentences in low-level, nonviolent drug offenses, and
re-sentence offenders under the fairer national sentencing guidelines.

Introducing the bill, Frank said, "I have spent a lot of time trying to
convince people that our drug policies are misguided, with too much emphasis
on punitive measures, and not enough on demand reduction efforts."

Frank has a point, and this might be a good time to replace the war on drugs
with a policy allowing state and local governments to design their own
treatment programs.

Frank's bill amends the 1994 Omnibus Control Bill. That legislation included
a safety valve from minimum mandatory penalties for certain first-time,
nonviolent, cooperative drug offenders. A safety valve means that in the
discretion of a federal district court judge, a defendant could be sentenced
under the federal sentencing guidelines, as opposed to the fixed minimum
mandatory sentences in the law.

Frank's proposal is worth supporting if it would free up some of the bunk
space occupied by drug offenders to be used by predatory crime perpetrators.

We don't think that mandatory sentencing of drug dealers is negotiable,
however. Dealers don't merit the same compassion as users, especially the
typically young, poor, uneducated, nonsocial prisoners.

But let's remember why this whole mandatory business began. It was to
correct an imbalance among judges, some of whom believed that drug use and
drug selling was not a crime but more of a social ill.

Even if we've gone as far as we can with drug users, we think locking
dealers up is still the thing to do.