ABA QUESTIONS GET-TOUGH CRIME TACK

Washington - Many get-tough approaches to crime don't work and some,
such as mandatory minimum sentences for small-time drug offenders, are
unfair and should be abolished, a report from the American Bar
Association said Wednesday.

Laws requiring mandatory minimum prison terms leave little room to
consider differences among crimes and criminals, an ABA commission
found. More people are behind bars for longer terms, but it is unclear
whether the country is safer as a result, the ABA said.

The report follows criticism of the criminal justice system last year
by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who asked the lawyers group
to look at what he called unfair practices. "The political phrase
'tough on crime' should not lead us into moral blindness," the justice
said Wednesday.

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the federal
guidelines in 1989, but Monday a federal judge in Boston ruled that
the guidelines are unconstitutional because they weight the system
toward prosecutors.

"The focus of our entire criminal justice system has shifted away from
trials and juries and adjudication to a massive system of sentence
bargaining that is heavily rigged against the accused citizen," U.S.
District Judge William Young wrote.

The ABA report urges governors and the president to pardon deserving
prisoners in greater numbers, and recommends stronger efforts to
reduce racial disparities in sentencing.

A black male born in 2001 has a one-in-three chance of being
imprisoned, compared with a one-in-six chance for a Latino male and a
one-in-17 chance for a white male, the report notes. The report says
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.