CONSERVATIVES, SPEAK UP ON NONVIOLENT OFFENDERS

Republican leadership in the Legislature gives conservatism a bad
name by trying to flood our city streets with handguns or block stem
cell research that could save millions of lives.

But while the GOP's leaders are trying to dangerously liberalize gun
laws and opposing pro-life medical research, some Republican
politicians truly believe in sound conservative principles of fiscal
responsibility and promotion of family values.

Two Republicans state Sen. Carol Roessler of Oshkosh and state Rep.
Garey Bies of Sister Bay requested a study to document the savings,
both in money and lives, that would result from moving Wisconsin
toward drug treatment instead of prison for nonviolent drug offenses.

Among the startling findings in the study by Judith Greene and Kevin
Pranis of Justice Strategies, a New York-based research organization,
is that Wisconsin currently is incarcerating 2,900 low-level,
nonviolent drug offenders with very limited criminal backgrounds who
are in need of drug treatment.

Wisconsin taxpayers are paying a whopping $83 million a year to lock
up people who are not endangering anyone other than themselves.

Any true conservative would wonder if there might possibly be a way
to cut such an enormous government expenditure that often returns
ex-offenders to the community more dangerous and less employable than
they were before going to prison.

The obvious answer is spelled out by Justice Strategies. The average
cost of prison in Wisconsin is $28,622 per prisoner. High-quality,
community-based drug treatment with wrap-around support services
would cost a fraction of that, $6,100 per person, plus less than
$2,000 per person for probation supervision.

Of course, everyone already knows drug treatment works better than
prison in dealing with addictions. That's why middle-class and
upper-class families seek treatment when a parent or a child has a
drug or alcohol problem.

Addiction is a medical problem for anyone who has insurance or the
financial means to pay for treatment. It is only a criminal problem
among the poor.

Wisconsin stands out nationwide for its alarming overuse of
incarceration for African-American, nonviolent, first-time drug
offenders, according to an introduction to the study.

That has been the driving force behind the state's most publicly
embarrassing racial distinction. Wisconsin ranks No. 1 with the
highest rate of incarceration of African Americans of any state in
the nation, according to the Sentencing Project.

Remember when we sophisticates used to look down on racially ignorant
states like Mississippi and Alabama? Now, we've become Mississippi and Alabama.

Justice Strategies documents the blatant racial disparity. African
Americans make up just 6 percent of Wisconsin's population, but
account for 47 percent of the state's prisoners and 64 percent of
those incarcerated for drug offenses.

African Americans in Wisconsin are 15 times more likely to be
incarcerated than whites and 40 times more likely than whites to be
incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses.

There is nothing conservative about a system that continues to pour
billions of tax dollars into a bottomless hole while tearing apart
our most vulnerable families and communities.

A conservative's dream would be a system that improved people's lives
by treating drug and alcohol addiction while saving taxpayers three
to four times as much money as the state spends.

That is exactly what Justice Strategies proposes. Researchers Greene
and Pranis estimated that spending just $10 million a year for
comprehensive, community-based treatment for individuals who would
otherwise be incarcerated would reduce prison costs by $30 million to
$40 million a year.

Actually, it would be good politics for conservative state
Republicans to take the lead in reforming the current system of
over-incarceration that wastes not only tax dollars but human lives.

That is because Justice Strategies laid many of disparities in the
current system squarely on the office of Democratic District Attorney
E. Michael McCann of Milwaukee County.

In mid-year 2002, for instance, there were more people in prison for
nonviolent drug offenses prosecuted in Milwaukee 1,520 than in all of
the other 71 counties combined 1,370.

Those convicted of nonviolent drug crimes accounted for nearly one
third of the growth in prisoners coming from Milwaukee in the last 10 years.

In many states, it is uncommon for anyone convicted of low-level drug
sales to be sent to prison unless he has a prior felony conviction.
In Wisconsin, however, nearly half of the prisoners serving time for
nonviolent drug offenses have no prior felonies.

The report quotes an assistant district attorney who formerly headed
the drug unit saying: "Our office takes the position that there's no
such thing as a nonviolent, small-time drug dealer."

Actually, there are plenty of petty drug crimes. It's the collateral
damage from over-incarceration of nonviolent, first-time drug
offenders that is costly and destructive to our state.

Maybe we should try a more conservative approach of providing
economical, effective drug treatment to hold families together and
improve people's lives.