BAR ASSOCIATION SUGGESTS ELIMINATING MINIMUM SENTENCES

"For more than 20 years, we have gotten tougher on crime; now we need to
get smarter."

So says American Bar Association President Dennis Archer.

Last week, that group recommended mandatory minimum sentences for
small-time drug offenders be abolished.

State and federal laws requiring mandatory minimum prison terms leave
little room to consider differences among crimes and criminals, a
commission studying problems in the criminal justice system found.

More people are behind bars for longer terms, but it is unclear whether the
country is safer as a result, the ABA said.

Long prison terms should be reserved for criminals who pose the greatest
danger to society and who commit the most serious crimes, the report said.
States and the federal government should find alternatives to prison terms,
such as drug treatment, for many less serious crimes.

"The costs of the American experiment in mass incarceration have been
high," the report said.

It said states and the federal government spent $9 billion on jails and
prisons in 1982 and $49 billion in 1999, an increase of more than 400
percent. The likelihood that someone living in the United States will go to
prison during his or her lifetime more than tripled to 6.6 percent between
1974 and 2001, the report added.

"Personally, I think [mandatory minimum sentences] create more criminals
than they correct," said Mark Runnell, who added that he's never spent time
in prison, but he did get a speeding ticket once.

"We take non-violent offenders, throw them in the pen with killers and
rapists, and expect them to come out better citizens than they were before?
That's messed up."

Evidently, the ABA thought so, too.

Their report, nearly a year in the making, follows up on blunt criticism of
the criminal justice system that came from an unlikely quarter last year.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a moderate conservative placed on
the court by President Reagan, asked the nation's largest lawyers' group to
look at what he called unfair and even immoral practices throughout the
criminal justice system.

The ABA responded with a lengthy study and recommendations for changes in
sentencing laws and in other areas. In the case of mandatory minimum
sentencing laws, state legislatures and Congress would have to pass new
measures to repeal the existing laws.

The ABA, the nation's largest lawyers' group with more than 400,000
members, will vote in August on whether to adopt the recommendations as
official positions of the organization. The ABA's policies are not law, but
are influential.

"I think that's probably a good idea in a lot of areas," said Tahlequah
attorney Monte Strout. "But there are a lot of different kinds of drugs,
and a lot of different levels of involvement in those drugs."

Many drug users, said Strout, would benefit more from treatment than from
incarceration.

He added that dealers and producers - like meth cooks - who are repeat
offenders probably need to be locked up.

But District Attorney Richard Gray said there are plenty of programs
already in place to give drug offenders a chance to redeem themselves.

"I don't think we should get rid of [mandatory minimum sentencing]," he
said. "We have drug court available for them, and community sentencing; I
don't think minimum sentencing interferes with those people getting help.
We certainly have other avenues for them, so by the time they're sentenced
to prison, they're ready for it."

Mandatory minimum sentences have proliferated over the past two decades,
and are often politically popular. They often respond to a specific new
threat or phenomenon, such as the spread of crack cocaine in the 1980s, and
the current scourge of methamphetamine.

In 1986, Congress required certain long federal prison terms for possession
of crack that were longer than sentences for the powder form of the drug.
For example, possession of just 5 grams of crack yields a mandatory prison
term of at least five years.

Learn More

For more on the American Bar Association's recommendations on drug
sentencing and other issues, go to http://www.abanet.org.