STUDY: MOST DRUG INMATES NOT VIOLENT

WASHINGTON (AP) - Most drug offenders in state prisons are black males with
no history of violence or high-level drug dealing, an interest group says.

The Sentencing Project, which advocates for alternatives to incarceration,
says that just over half of these state inmates - 58 percent, or 124,885
people - are nonviolent offenders.

"They represent a pool of appropriate candidates for diversion to treatment
programs or some other type of community-based sanctions," the authors
wrote. "The 'war on drugs' has been overly punitive and costly and has
diverted attention and resources from potentially more constructive
approaches."

Based largely on the government's 1997 Survey of Inmates in State
Correctional Facilities, issued every five years, the study found that four
out of every five drug offenders in state prisons are minorities. This is
more than three times the rate of minority drug use in society, according
to the 1997 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.

Blacks constitute 56 percent of drug offender inmates, while Hispanics make
up 23 percent of that group. Their respective proportions of all monthly
drug users nationwide are 13 percent and 9 percent, the group said.

Meanwhile, three-quarters of all state drug inmates have no convictions for
violence, the study said.

Todd Gaziano, who studies criminal justice as a senior fellow at the
Heritage Foundation, criticized the study for relying on a survey that asks
inmates to describe their own level of criminal activity.

And he said the Sentencing Project lumped many drug dealers together with
those convicted of possession.

"Retail drug dealers may not be as culpable as international drug kingpins,
but it is highly misleading to suggest that they are all merely low-level
drug users who need nothing more than treatment and counseling," Gaziano said.

About 251,200 drug offenders reside in state prisons, the study says. Those
inmates cost taxpayers about $5 billion every year.

Treatment versus incarceration for drug offenders is a decades-old debate
mediated in some places by specially assigned drug courts that typically
include drug treatment in their sentences for drug offenders.

While some advocate for alternatives to incarceration for minor drug
offenders, others say the threat of incarceration has a deterrent effect.