ACLU REPORT: U.S. DRUG LAWS HARM WOMEN

NEW YORK (AP) -- America's war on drugs is inflicting deep and
disproportionate harm on women - most of them mothers - who are filling
prisons in ever-rising numbers despite their typically minor roles in drug
rings, the American Civil Liberties Union and two other groups contend in a
major new report.

The report, "Caught in the Net," is being released Thursday as the focus of
a two-day national conference in New York, bringing together criminal
justice officials, sentence-reform activists and other experts to consider
its package of proposed legislative and policy changes. The report
recommends expansion of treatment programs geared toward women, says
incarceration should be a last resort, and urges more vigorous efforts to
maintain ties between imprisoned mothers and their children.

"Drug convictions have caused the number of women behind bars to explode,
leaving in the rubble displaced children and overburdened families," the
document says.

The number of imprisoned women is increasing at a much faster rate than the
number of men, mostly because of tougher drug laws. There were 101,000
women in state and federal prisons in 2003, an eight-fold increase since
1980; roughly one-third were drug offenders, compared to about one-fifth of
male inmates.

"Many of the drug conspiracy and accomplice laws were created to go after
the kingpins," said the ACLU women's rights project director, Lenora
Lapidus, a lead author of the report. "But women who may simply be a
girlfriend or wife are getting caught in the web as well, and sent to
prison for very long times when all they may have done is answer the
telephone."

Lapidus acknowledged that legislation addressing the situation would
probably need to be gender-neutral. But she and her fellow authors - from
New York University Law School's Brennan Center for Justice and the
advocacy group Break the Chains - make a detailed case that existing drug
laws "have had specific, devastating and disparate effects on women."

Among their contentions:

- -Many women are ensnared in drug investigations despite peripheral
involvement, sometimes solely because they failed to turn in their partners
to police. Sentencing laws fail to consider factors such as physical abuse
or economic dependence that may draw women into drug abuse or deter them
from notifying authorities of a partner's drug activity.

- -Treatment programs, to the extent they exist, often are tailored for men
and prove relatively ineffective for women.

- -Black and Hispanic women are imprisoned for drug offenses at higher rates
than white women even though their rates of illegal drug use are
comparable. Factors include prosecutors' decisions, policing tactics and
selective testing of pregnant minority women for drug use.

- -Most imprisoned women, and relatively few imprisoned men, leave behind
children for whom they were the sole primary caretaker. The separation can
be shattering for mothers, who may lose parental rights, and for children,
thousands of whom are placed in foster care at state expense.

The report makes an economic case for change, contending that the combined
annual cost of imprisoning a mother and placing a child in foster care is
seven times the cost of an intensive one-year drug treatment program.

Several mothers jailed for drug offenses are attending the conference,
including Dorothy Gaines, whose 19-year prison sentence for cocaine
conspiracy was commuted by President Clinton in 2000 after she served six
years. Gaines says her son, Phillip, now 20, was devastated by the separation.

"He was an honor roll student, but when I went to prison, he just lost it,"
Gaines said in a telephone interview from Alabama. "Even when I finally
came home, he tried to kill himself. He's still bearing the scars."

The issues raised in the report are difficult ones for criminal justice
officials as their states debate building new prisons or diverting more
nonviolent drug offenders into treatment.

"When there's a woman defendant with children, we generally try everything
we can to put her into rehab rather than prison," said Michael Arcuri,
district attorney in New York's Oneida County and former president of the
state DA's association.

"On the other hand, we're supposed to treat everyone the same," he said.
"You see more women in prison because you see more women selling drugs.
Some of them feel that, because we were softer on women in the past,
they'll get some sort of easier treatment."

Bruce Bullington, a Florida State University criminologist, said
drug-offending mothers may win sympathy from some activists but often are
viewed harshly by lawmakers.

"It's not just an issue of drugs, but of embedded moral values," he said.
"We demonize these women, and it comes back to haunt us in a variety of ways."