   Police and Prisons

 by A.M. Rosenthal, _New York Times_ Op-Ed, 1/28/94

   More and more billions for prisons to lock up more and more Americans who
never had a decent chance at life. Are we mad? Why not use those billions to
build more schools to give more young people living in poverty the education
to climb out of it? It costs as much to keep a convict in prison as to send
him to Yale, for Heaven's sake.
   And despite all the other billions the U.S. spends on the drug war,
narcotics still flood the country, users are still being put into prison,
crowding out violent criminals. Why not legalize drugs and use the anti-drug
money on therapy for addicts and to improve the neighborhoods that create
them?
   And why those long sentences for convicts? Every year behind bars makes
them more bitter. They return to the same hard streets. Save money by cutting
sentences. Spend the savings to give released convicts training for decent
jobs.
   Those three paragraphs sum up an important belief in American liberal
intellectual life -- the belief that war against crime and drugs is largely
aimed at and hurts the poor and wastes huge amounts of money that could be
used to fight the poverty, discrimination and educational deprivation that are
the root causes of crime.
   The argument is false factually. Worse, it is damaging to people it is
supposed to benefit -- Americans, all skin shades, who live in the streets of
poverty and killing.
   Economically, the struggle against crime is the biggest bargain the
taxpayer gets. A criminal on the loose costs society twice as much as a
criminal in jail -- in stolen good, smashed property and of course the medical
care for the victims.
   The drug war has not yet been won. But it has saved hundreds or thousands
of Americans from lives of addiction that would have cost the country scores
of billions. Nobody knows exactly how much because drug abuse is the cause of
so many other crimes like family violence, robberies and muggings.
   Most of the crime takes place in poor neighborhoods. Drug addicts gobble up
hospital space and time that would have gone to the people of those
neighborhoods. Fighting crime and drugs is one tax expenditure that benefits
the poor most of all.
   All those crowded jails are not filled with pot smokers caught by cops on
patrol. Prof. John J. DiIulio Jr. of Princeton and Brookins reports that 93
percent of convicts in state prisons are violent criminals, many of them
repeat offenders.
   Yes, a lot of Americans are in jail. A lot more should be. If your house
is burgled, there is a 1 in 80 chance the criminal will serve time.
   The trouble with long sentences is that they turn out not to be all that
long. Convicts serve about one-third of their sentences. A rapist can expect
to be out in 5 years, a convicted murderer in 10.
   President Clinton now recognizes the dreadful importance of crime in
American life. But if he is to lead, as he should, he ought to make sure his
top officers are following on close.
   About mandatory sentences, his Attorney General is known to law officers as
Waffle General. His Surgeon General boosts another study of the much-studied
legalization of drugs. Then after he properly says "nothing doing," she boosts
it again. Either she does not believe what the President says or just does not
care very much.
   Most of all, he should tell us the hardest truth of all -- how deeply
criminals have hurt the already wounded of America, the poor.
   The President should tell us that criminals who have stayed out of jail and
criminals who got out too early have turned large parts of the inner city into
war zones. "Build schools, not prisons" -- that's not a choice now, it is a
hoax.
   In war zones the money and energy of government and the people go to
surviving, fighting and winning. Sometimes a little extra money and energy are
spent to keep up spirits. But was there ever a case where in a war zone under
attack there was enough money to make life decent and build for the future?
   The criminals have deprived other citizens of the greatest civil liberty --
the right to live in peace. They have also deprived citizens of the treasure
to build for the future.
   That is what the President should tell the country, for it is the plain
truth and will be so until the winning starts.
