BILLS ADMIT DRUG STANCE WENT TOO FAR

More than two decades after enacting some of the nation's harshest penalties
for the possession and sale of illegal drugs, Michigan lawmakers are poised
to acknowledge that the state's approach to narcotics crime has been a
costly failure.

Legislation adopted by the state House of Representatives last week would
abolish mandatory prison sentences based solely on the amount of the drugs
seized in an arrest and give judges in drug cases the same discretion they
now enjoy in sentencing violent offenders.

Instead of being dispatched to prison for minimum terms of 10 and 20 years,
newly convicted drug offenders would be sentenced under guidelines that take
into account an offender's criminal history, the use or absence of deadly
weapons, and the likelihood that the offender would benefit from substance
abuse treatment.

Mandatory lifetime probation for drug offenders would be eliminated, and
more than 4,000 ex-cons now required to report to state probation officers
for the rest of their lives would be eligible for discharge after five years
of supervision.

Steady Campaign

The long-overdue overhaul of Michigan's drug sentencing laws was spearheaded
by state Rep. Bill McConico, D-Detroit, who labored patiently to win the
support of prosecutors, judges and substance abuse treatment professionals.

Approved last Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the package is
expected to win the approval of the full Senate before this year's lame
duck-session ends.

Maybe it's a coincidence that McConico's bills moved the same week lawmakers
began cutting expenditures to make up for a half-billion-dollar shortfall in
state revenues, but I doubt it.

Hard times make for hard choices, but they also have a way of illuminating
the difference between crime-fighting measures that sound good and those
that actually deliver value to taxpayers.

Draconian mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders have never been in
the second category.

Intended to take major traffickers off the street, they've succeeded mostly
in filling Michigan's prisons with addicts and mules too low in the food
chain to trade what they know for reduced charges.

Incarceration Soars

In the two decades following the adoption of mandatory minimum sentences,
the rate of incarceration for drug offenses jumped 23 percent for whites and
more than 300 percent for black people. By 1998, one of every five persons
dispatched to Michigan prisons was committed for a drug offense.

Last week, when Gov. John Engler and state lawmakers went hunting for places
to cut the state's budget, they agreed to slash spending in most departments
by 2.5 percent. But in the Department of Corrections, where annual spending
has ballooned from $732 million to $1.7 billion during Engler's 12 years in
office, they were able to pare only 1 percent.

It will be awhile before the new drug sentencing guidelines free up much bed
space in Michigan's prisons. But McConico's legislation should gradually
enable the state to concentrate more of its prison resources on the most
dangerous criminals, while diverting more nonviolent drug offenders to
treatment programs.

And it's important to remember that addicts who beat their habits won't just
relieve taxpayers of the burden of housing and feeding them. If we're lucky,
they'll become taxpayers themselves.