ACTIVISTS RALLY TO REVISE PRISON POLICIES

100 People Shrug Off Heat at Lafayette Square Protest

When David Losa, 37, cycled into Lafayette Square yesterday in the
scorching heat, the crowd at a rally for prison reform broke into
wild applause. It marked the end of a 3,000-mile trip for Losa, who
biked across the country to advocate changes in California's
three-strikes policy.

His brother Doug was his inspiration. California law mandates a life
sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years for third-time felons
convicted of two violent offenses. Losa's brother, who committed two
convenience store robberies when he was 18, is serving decades in
prison for his third offense: possession of a quantity of
methamphetamines too small to measure, the scrapings from the inside
of a couple of plastic baggies, Losa said.

"I'm not against locking up people for murders, rapes, child
molestations," said Losa, a waiter from Santa Barbara, Calif. "But
let's just save the prison space for those people, not drug users and
petty shoplifters. Let the time fit the crime."

Losa was among about 100 people at yesterday's demonstration, many
previously incarcerated or family members of prisoners. With T-shirts
that read "Department of Injustice, Guilty Until Proven Innocent,"
they spoke about the need to change the prison system in a country
that has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. They
also condemned U.S. prisons as an abusive industry based on profit
rather than rehabilitation.

"We've represented dozens of people sentenced to life in prison
without parole for stealing a bicycle, writing a bad check or simple
possession of marijuana. And it's that kind of sentencing policy that
has resulted in the prison population growing from 200,000 to 2
million in the last 30 years," said Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer with
the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama and the group's executive director.

The event organizer, Roberta Franklin, a radio talk show host from
Montgomery, Ala., said she mortgaged her home to pay for the rally.
Several years ago, Franklin said she began to receive letters from
inmates at Alabama's Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women detailing their
lack of medical care -- including one woman who said she weighed 80
pounds because the false teeth that she needed to eat properly were
not provided, and another with ovarian cancer getting only Tylenol
for pain. The lawsuit prompted by the conditions led to a court
settlement last year.

Franklin said the experience was eye-opening and fueled a desire to
change U.S. sentencing laws, improve prison conditions and shift the
focus to education, poverty alleviation and rehabilitation.

"I used to believe in this system," Franklin said. Now, she said,
"it's my belief when good people . . . hear the story of America's
prisons, they'll be disgusted."