SENTENCING REFORM CAMPAIGN GAINS A WEALTHY SOLDIER

Martha Stewart thinks of others who will be serving time in the nation's
prisons after she leaves her cell in Alderson and returns to the
billion-dollar homemaking empire she built.

She has joined the move for sentencing reform, a move that includes
everyday citizens, lawyers, judges and all. They oppose mandatory
sentencing for nonviolent crimes by first offenders and the appalling
results of the punitive philosophy that says, "Lock 'em up and throw away
the key."

Martha Stewart knows the results that she sees among women inmates at
Alderson who are "devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family." She's
aware of such plight for male and female inmates in burgeoning prisons
across the country.

She has served about half of her five-month sentence. But many thousands of
prisoners, like those she knows at Alderson, will serve years longer,
particularly for drug violations under federal mandatory sentencing.

She believes drug offenders would be better served by rehabilitation than
by prison. Her resolve was reported in a Christmas message on her personal
Web site.

"I have had time to think, time to write, time to exercise, time to not eat
the bad food and time to walk and contemplate the future," she said.

That future includes a part in the long struggle against mandatory
sentencing that was started about 30 years ago in the war on drugs. The war
grew with the rise of cocaine, especially cracked or processed cocaine
associated with street crime and violence.

Under federal guidelines, for instance, mandatory sentencing calls for a
minimum of five years for selling 5 grams of crack, the drug of choice for
Latinos and African-Americans in the inner-cities.

By comparison, the five-year minimum sentence applies to the sale of 500
grams of powder cocaine, or a ratio of 1 to 100. Powder cocaine is the drug
of choice for whites from the suburbs to Washington to Wall Street.

Drug convictions have been a major cause for the swollen prison population
in the country, from 200,000 in 1973 to about 2 million today.

Black inmates alone account for 40 percent of the male prisoners, of whom
about 60 percent are serving time for drugs, according to government figures.

It costs about $20,000 a year to maintain an inmate in federal or state prison.

I see that the rise of privatized penal institutions has done little or
nothing to reduce cost or risk, but the population increase definitely has
made prisons a growth industry for investments and jobs in West Virginia
and other states.

Even so, Martha Stewart and many more see a downside to this growth in both
dollars and sense.

"I have become convinced that one of the most harmful manifestations of
our desperate war on the drug trade has been the implementation of
mandatory sentencing guidelines," wrote Charleston lawyer Elliot G. Hicks
in the State Bar magazine in 1999.

Since then, state Supreme Court Justice Larry Starcher said, "We need to
get rid of mandatory minimum sentences, because they clog our jails and
prisons with offenders who donA't need that level of security."

Dennis Archer, president of the American Bar Association, said, "For more
than 20 years, we have gotten tougher on crime. Now we need to get smarter."

The ABA and others for sentencing reform have the help of Martha Stewart,
who looks forward to going back to her company and to host a daytime TV
talk show with a live studio audience come fall.