US crime fighters divided on issue of prison terms

"You have a group of people in control who really are true believers in incarceration. They have almost religious zeal to see that people get sentenced to prison for a long time."

Frank Bowman, former federal prosecutor

Last week, US Attorney General John Ashcroft gave federal prosecutors orders to all but eliminate plea bargaining with defendants and, almost without exception, prosecute the most serious charges they can prove.

Meanwhile, from Connecticut to California, legislatures and governors are, with a few exceptions, eagerly finding new ways to reduce, rethink or eliminate prison sentences for crimes within their jurisdictions.

The result is a somewhat contradictory national crime-fighting agenda: As the Ashcroft Justice Department demands the harshest prison terms and goes out of its way to track federal judges who do not give them, state lawmakers are openly advocating less time for the same crime and giving judges more discretion in choosing punishments.

"To just say everybody should go to jail all the time is unfair and very simplistic," said Michael Lawlor, a Connecticut state representative and co-chairman of the General Assembly's Judiciary Committee, which is considering several bills that offer drug-addicted and mentally ill criminals alternatives to incarceration.

That states and the executive branch in Washington differ on policy is not surprising. But experts say it is eye-opening how divergent each side views its common mission of cutting crime.

"The states and the federal government are moving in quite different directions," said Frank Bowman, a former federal prosecutor who is a professor at the Indiana University School of Law.

At the Justice Department, he said, "You have a group of people in control who really are true believers in incarceration. They have almost religious zeal to see that people get sentenced to prison for a long time."

At the same time, Bowman added, in dozens of states with the toughest laws on nonviolent crime -- including New York, Texas and California -- "people are scratching their heads and saying, `You know, incarcerating people for that long doesn't work.'"

The differences are partly a matter of ideology, politics and, in the case of nearly every state government, money.

Ashcroft often said that taking criminals "off the street and keeping them off the street reduces crime." To Lawlor, a moderate Democrat, and to lawmakers from both political parties across the nation, that is a simplistic conclusion, one their states can no longer afford to make.

"We just want to be a little more careful about who we send to jail," Lawlor said.

The federal prison system now has more than 172,000 inmates, a larger and faster growing prison population than any single state's, including California's and Texas'. Each holds roughly 163,000 prisoners. In a speech on Monday announcing his new directive to prosecutors, Ashcroft said it was aimed at putting away "child predators, criminal bosses, drug kingpins and violent gun criminals."

It may do that, critics of the new policy say, but it will also send away far more young first-time nonviolent offenders -- criminals for whom a reasonable hope of rehabilitation still exists.

Moreover, more than half of the federal inmates -- 55 percent -- were convicted of relatively unspectacular drug-related crimes, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Inmates of weapons or immigration charges make up 22 percent of federal inmates. Murderers and sex offenders, by contrast, make up only 5 percent, and major drug traffickers represent less than 1 percent of prisoners in the federal system.

Thus, despite Ashcroft's tough words, many criminologists say his new directive will not significantly change the number of years the worst criminals spend in prison.

"It's not as if those types of people aren't serving a huge amount of time already," said Michael Jacobson, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

Jacobson, a former New York City correction commissioner, is also a consultant to lawmakers in several states where interest in reducing or eliminating prison sentences has flourished as a way to cut recidivism and trim insatiable prison budgets.

"States just don't have the money, so there is this incredible willingness from folks on both sides of the aisle to come together and talk about these things," said Daniel Wilhelm, director of the state sentencing and corrections program at the Vera Institute of Justice, a Manhattan-based nonprofit group.

But to make sure federal jurists get the point, Ashcroft ordered prosecutors last month to begin notifying his office whenever a judge hands down a sentence more lenient than the range set by federal sentencing guidelines.

Another difference in the disparity among federal and state sentencing guidelines is the cost. Most states are required by law to balance their annual bud-gets; the federal government is not. Unlike prison budgets in most large states, the expenditure for the federal Bureau of Prisons amounts to a microscopic fraction of overall spending.

"As long as Ashcroft doesn't feel particularly financially constrained," Jacobson said. "Then he's not going to feel a lot of pressure and the politics of this will still work at the federal level."