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In the last few days the President and his Drug Czar, Barry McCaffrey, have stated unmistakably their moral and practical opposition to mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders. I now wholeheartedly join in urging the President to grant reduced sentences to low-level, non-violent drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences. Because of my background I will focus on the seven ways that mandatory minimum sentences harm legitimate federal law enforcement interests.

1. There is absolutely no evidence that the use of mandatory minimum sentences has increased the price or reduced the purity or availability of our most feared drugs.

2. At the same time minimum mandatory sentences are shamefully wasteful of law enforcement resources, dedicating millions of dollars and thousands of prison cells to a length of sentence one can not justify by its additional deterrent effect.

3. The wasteful continuation of an experiment that has failed, at a time when state and federal prisons are releasing over 500,000 prisoners a year back into their communities, itself poses an additional and unacceptable risk of changing non-violent drug offenders into dangerous criminals because of the centuries of time the mandatory minimum sentences add to the cell lives and dangerous associations of low-level, non-violent offenders.

4. Mandatory minimum sentences send the wrong moral message to the public at large by equating the appropriate penalties for non-violent drug offenses to the penalties for many of our most heinous, violent crimes.

5. Mandatory minimum sentences are perceived by Black and Hispanic Americans as biased because in fact they are imposed very disproportionately on these segments of the population and because of the indefensible disparity between the penalties for the same quantities of crack and powdered cocaine. The result of this is that the legislatively imposed structure, which does not bring about deterrence, undermines support for law enforcement in communities where it is badly needed.

6. Law enforcement officials take sentencing structures as signals as to where their priorities should lie. The exaggerated penalties for non-violent drug crimes have misdirected Federal law enforcement priorities. They also distract attention from creative alternatives to radically reducing the market for drugs alternatives such as compelling abstinence by the very high percentage of drug users who are arrested each year by means of testing twice a week during sustained periods of probation, parole, or conditional release (with short jail sentences the absolutely certain results of a return to use).

7. The U.S. Sentencing Commission and federal judges, appointed with the approval of both parties in Congress and the President, can and will deal firmly and far more sensibly with non-violent drug offenders if we free them from the structure of hypocritical, symbolic politics.

Mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders are long overdue for repeal as a costly, foolish scheme that doesn't work, at great cost to law enforcement. President Clinton can strike a blow for law enforcement by reducing the excessive sentences of non-violent drug offenders.

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