WAR ON CRIME DOESN'T WIN MANY BATTLES

Did you hear the one about Ronald Reagan's moralistic attorney general, Ed
Meese, putting his name on a studied assertion that Congress has passed far
too many laws for the country's own good?

Probably not. The story about the 16-member blue-ribbon task force appointed
by the American Bar Association dropped into the public hopper while most in
the media were dithering about the aftermath of impeachment misfire.

Meese said of his panel's reasoned advice to the nation, "Crime legislation
is popular. Most of the time it's just feel-good legislation" that overlaps
state and local laws. Such duplication, Meese suggested, "undermines the
critical role of the states and local law enforcement."

Such coverage of the new Meese report as made its way through the
impeachment thicket noted that the ABA panel echoed earlier criticism by the
fellow now and forever best known for the size and number of gold stripes on
the sleeves of his judicial robe. In his annual report in December, Chief
Justice William Rehnquist scolded Congress for trying "to appear responsive
to every highly publicized societal ill or sensational crime."

The epidemic of over-legislation has been sapping the public strength for
about 30 years. Of all the federal laws written since the Civil War ended
134 years ago, better than seven of 10 were shoved onto the books since
1970.

The blizzard of law has not made people feel safer even though crime rates
have dropped as the baby boomers hit middle age and gave up bad habits. The
Meese panel said, "Increased federalization is rarely, if ever, likely to
have any appreciable effect on the categories of violent crime that most
concern Americans, because in practice federal law enforcement can reach
only a small percent of such activity."

All the same, the rash of federal laws has helped this country to lock up
more people for longer terms than any nation any time anywhere.

Locking out black votes

The new laws are particularly hard on young men of color, who are thereby
disenfranchised owing to the legal tradition that felons lose citizenship.
Fully 13 percent of all African-American men in the United States are barred
from voting by state laws barring the ballot box against any felon. In 10
states, 20 percent of African-American males are disenfranchised. No cynic
will be at all shocked that those states are in the former Confederacy,
whose legislators are skilled at arranging for power to be returned to white
men. Alabama, in the deepest south, keeps 7.5 percent of adults out of the
voting booth because they are felons. Nearly 31.5 percent of
African-American men are banned from voting for members of Congress who
might pay attention to Meese and Rehnquist.

Alabama and a few other states are at least talking about changing the laws
forever depriving felons of suffrage no matter how fully they may
demonstrate rehabilitation from the failure of civility that ran them into
the thickets of criminal legislation. Proponents recur to the notion that a
society is stronger as it makes the most of the strengths and talents of all
its members, particularly in such an important area as self-government. No
society can hope for continued success if it arranges for more and more of
its human raw material to be shunted aside to cages and left out of the
power system.

The notion is backed by a few solid conservatives. Florida Republican Gov.
Jeb Bush, who pitched his message partly to black voters last year, supports
giving rehabilitated felons the vote under certain conditions in his state.
Texas allows some felons to apply for voting rights as soon as they have
finished serving their time.

Unfortunately for the reform efforts is the countervailing legislative
belief that more criminal laws can fix anything. In particular, there is a
strong belief that such laws will assure re-election. Federal or state
legislators who won't play along with the rush to criminalize more and more
behaviors are accused by their challengers as being soft on crime. That may
not always or usually make the difference on voting day, but the national
folklore insists that Mike Dukakis would have been president but for George
Bush's success in painting the Massachusetts governor as a wimp in the crime
war.

Hints of sanity recently surfaced in the Washington Legislature. Rep. Ida
Ballasiotes, R-Mercer Island, got into politics when her daughter was
murdered and has been Olympia's most angry crime fighter. She's pushing
bills now to use expensive prison space for really violent offenders rather
than the 3,000 locked up thanks to recent tough-on-drugs statutes. If such
trends take hold, Clark County might even be able to defer a huge
expenditure for additional jail space.