SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A17

LENGTH: 842 words

HEADLINE: Setback for D.C. Justice

BYLINE: Robert L. Wilkins

BODY:


Just a few weeks ago the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights concluded a comprehensive study on the criminal justice system with this warning: "Current [racial and ethnic] disparities in criminal justice threaten 50 years of progress toward equality. . . . Criminal justice reform is a civil rights challenge that can no longer be ignored."

A recent projection found that an African American man has a 28.5 percent chance of going to prison for one year or more during his lifetime, while white men have a 4.4 percent chance. Nationwide, the incarceration rate of African Americans is 10 times that of whites. In the District, it is 36 times. It does not appear, though, that the mayor and the D.C. Council are heeding the warnings of civil rights groups. Instead, they are poised to change the District's criminal justice statistics drastically for the worse.

Tomorrow the D.C. Council is expected to vote on the Sentencing Reform Amendment Act of 2000, which would abolish parole for all felony offenses in the District. When Congress passed the Revitalization Act in 1997, it required the District to abolish parole and adopt federal "get tough" truth-in-sentencing standards for 37 felonies, effective August 2000, as part of legislation closing the Lorton prison and moving D.C. inmates to federal prisons by the end of 2001.

The bill before the council goes further than Congress required by abolishing parole for all felonies effective in August, eliminating rehabilitative programs for youthful offenders charged with violent crimes, lengthening certain prison sentences beyond those recommended by the council's own advisory commission and encouraging the implementation of sentencing guidelines by 2002.

If this bill passes as drafted, it almost certainly will increase incarceration rates and racial disparities in the District's criminal justice system. In the current system, an offender is released on parole at some point between the minimum sentence and maximum sentence, depending on the offense and the prisoner's background and behavior. The actual amount of time the average offender serves in prison is generally between one-third and one-half of the maximum sentence the judge gives.

The bill would get rid of minimum sentences, keep the same potential maximum sentences and require offenders to serve at least 85 percent of the sentence imposed. Therefore, unless judges make significant downward adjustments to their new sentences from the maximum terms given in the current system, the amount of prison time served will increase drastically in the new system.

Even with parole, prison sentences in the District are among the more severe in the nation. The District's incarceration rate is three times the national average. Justice Department statistics have shown that the prison time served for violent offenses in the District is twice the national average of the 50 states and three times the national average for property, weapons and drug offenses.

Most participants in public hearings have testified that current prison stays are adequate, and no one involved in the process says that the District is "soft on crime" and needs to lock up its offenders for longer periods of time; yet that seems precisely where we are headed. Why?

It's also worth recalling that the Revitalization Act required that at least 50 percent of all District offenders be housed in private prisons by September 2003. This unprecedented arrangement gives the private prison lobby a strong economic incentive to encourage an increase in the District's already long prison sentences. In this context, crime (or at least harsh punishment) does pay.

Pushing for sentencing guidelines is just as troubling. The council's advisory commission found a decision on guidelines to be premature--a conclusion this bill ignores. Guidelines also transfer power from a neutral party--the judge--to a combatant--the prosecutor, who usually ends up with the greatest influence over sentencing by making decisions on plea bargains and what charges to bring.

This transfer shifts even more control of our criminal justice system out of local control, because the Home Rule Act exempts the U.S. attorney from oversight by the council or the mayor. While judges explain their decisions on the public record for everyone to see, the U.S. attorney's office guards its practices like state secrets.

Further, sentencing guidelines across the nation tend to change significantly over time because of legislative tinkering, and detailed District guidelines would be more susceptible to amendment and interference by Congress than general sentencing statutes. Prison stays and racial disparities both have increased markedly since federal sentencing guidelines were implemented in 1987. Do we really want to create a system for the District that could over time have the same effects?



The writer is an attorney with the D.C. Public Defender Service and his agency's delegate to the Advisory Commission on Sentencing.







GRAPHIC: ILL,,margaret scott

LOAD-DATE: June 05, 2000