CRACK AND CRIME GO DOWN TOGETHER

Improved policing, longer prison sentences and beefedup emergency room
services have all contributed to the sharp fiveyear decline in homicides
that police and politicians around the nation have been crowing about.

But according to a Justice Department report commissioned by Atty. Gen.
Janet Reno, the most significant factor in the decline may have been the
waning of the crack epidemic.

In five of six cities studied, homicide rates went down in tandem with
rates of positive cocaine test results for newly arrested criminals. An
this was true even in cities where policing strategy had not significantly
changed.

Although the study cannot be considered dispositive and has attracted some
criticism, the finding is enormously heartening and important. And it
accords with the results of another study, by the nonprofit National
Development and Research Institutes in New York, that found a sharp drop in
crack use among youths sent to jail beginning in the late 1980's.

The decrease coincided with the general reduction in crime that has become
a hallmark of the 1990s. And, the study's authors point out, it is the
reverse of the pattern in the early 1980s, when both crack use and crime
soared.

Experts offer three reasons for the recent decline in crack use. For one,
younger people look at the devastating impact crack has had on their elders
and conclude that using the drug simply makes no sense.

Second, lawenforcement agencies are getting smarter about reducing the
availability of drugs and weapons before they can get into young hands and
turn youthful disputes into deadly shootings.

And third, many local community groups have gotten smarter and stronger in
their resolve to close down neighborhood "crack houses" and work with
police as antibodies to such infestations.

The public response to this turn of events should be to demand more of it.
Antidrug ads and other community efforts can help further promote the
message young people need to hear. Police efforts to break up drug gangs,
as Boston has done with nationally acclaimed success in recent years,
should be further encouraged.

Many protests have been raised over sentencing disparities that penalize
possession of crack cocaine four times more seriously than comparable
amount [sic] of powder cocaine. Those protests are wellgrounded,
especially since crack users are far more likely to be poor and black or
Latino.

The Clinton administration is taking steps to reduce the disparity
somewhat, but that does not change the central problem, which is to
eliminate crack from America's streets. And it is all the more urgent
since, it now appears, to eliminate crack is also to eliminate a
substantial amount of crime.