Crime Bill Report

At long last Congress has completed its Crime Bill odyssey, producing an expensive, draconian, poorly thought out mess that will do little or nothing to reduce crime. The result is not as bad as expected, however, and there are a few bright spots. Crime Bill spending totals $30.2 billion over 6 years; this money will be spent on four general categories:

• Police: $13.4 billion to hire and train thousands of new officers.

• Prisons: $9.9 billion to build new prisons, boot camps, and facilities to free space for violent offenders.

• Prevention: $5.5 billion for grants for anti-gang activities and programs to combat violence against women.

• Anti-drug efforts: $1.4 billion for drug courts and drug treatment for inmates.

We summarize here the major provisions of the bill that are relevant to the drug laws:

• Title II provides $7.9 billion in grants to states for prison construction and modification, and alternative correctional facilities. Grants will be governed by regulations to be written by the Attorney General. To be eligible, states must have laws requiring that violent offenders serve at least 85 percent of the prison time to which they have been sentenced. Fifty percent of these funds will be reserved for "Truth in Sentencing Incentive Grants". To be eligible for these funds, states must meet several criteria, including having a comprehensive correctional plan including diversion, rehabilitation and post-release assistance programs.

  While the Crime Bill's prison funds are targeted at violent offenders, they are likely to provide a disincentive to states to lighten drug sentences by easing the prison crowding caused by the drug laws.

• Title VI expands the federal death penalty from two crimes to more than 50 crimes, including crimes that do not involve murder: espionage, treason, major drug trafficking even when no death results from the crime, and attempted murders by "drug kingpins". This section federalizes offenses that are already capital in many states, and authorizes the federal government to impose the death penalty even in states like New York which have no death penalty. Many of these penalties are unconstitutional according to previous court opinions that have found that the 8th amendment limits the death penalty to crimes involving murder.

  Note that individuals can be convicted solely on the testimony of a government informant. The testimony of informants is unreliable because of the incentive they have to obtain convictions: Informants are either paid a reward by the government, or have been arrested themselves on drug charges and are usually required to testify to convict others to reduce their own sentences. Hence, informants have a strong incentive to lie in order to obtain convictions.

  Note also that because the death penalty can be applied to "continuing criminal enterprises", an individual whom an informant says, for example, grew 3,000 marijuana plants every year for 20 years is eligible to receive the death penalty.

• Title VII is the notorious "three strikes you're out" law. This provision mandates life imprisonment without parole for persons convicted of three of certain felonies. The third conviction must be on a federal level for a violent offense. Strikes one and two can be state or federal convictions, and either strike one or two may be a drug offense carrying a minimum of 10 years imprisonment.

• Title VIII is the hard won "safety valve". This provision allows certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who would have been given mandatory minimum sentences to instead be sentenced under the federal Sentencing Guidelines as long as the guideline is at least a 2-year sentence. Hence, certain federal defendants will be eligible to avoid mandatory minimum sentences so long as they have no more than 1 criminal history point (no criminal record more serious than a misdemeanor conviction for which a maximum of a 60-day sentence was imposed); did not use violence or a dangerous weapon or induce others to use violence or a dangerous weapon; the offense did not result in death or serious bodily injury; were not an organizers, leaders, managers, or supervisors; and have provided the government all information concerning the offense prior to sentencing. The last provision is troubling because it requires individuals to "inform" on others in order to qualify for the exemption.

  Many were disappointed when retroactivity was stripped from the safety valve as part of a last minute bargain to save the Crime Bill from defeat in Congress. An effect of the non-retroactive safety valve is that prisoners serving terms as short as two years will live side by side with people serving five to ten years for the same offenses. Sentencing reform activists will be working on retroactivity during the next session of Congress.

  Another sentencing reform which made it into the Crime Bill is a provision which would allow certain drug offenders a one year reduction in sentence following completion of a 6 to 12 month drug treatment program.

• Title XXVII creates a Presidential Summit on Violence and National Commission on Crime Prevention and Control. This commission includes provisions for some study of drug policy that could serve the purpose of the commission called for in the "Hoover Resolution". These provisions include: examining the root causes of illicit drug use and abuse in the United States, including compiling existing research regarding those root causes; evaluating federal, state, and local laws and policies on the prevention of drug abuse, control of unlawful production, distribution and use of controlled substances, and the efficacy of sentencing policies with regard to those laws; analyzing the allocation of resources among interdiction, enforcement, education, and treatment and rehabilitation; analyzing current treatment and rehabilitation methods and making recommendations for improvements; identifying any existing gaps in drug abuse policy that result from the lack of attention to the root causes of drug abuse; assessing the needs of government at all levels for resources and policies for reducing the overall desire of individuals to experiment with and abuse illicit drugs; and making recommendations regarding necessary improvements in policies for reducing the use of illicit drugs in the United States.

The commission will be composed of 28 members appointed as follows (assuming that the commission will not be convened before January 1995 and the House and Senate remain in democratic control): 10 persons by the President, not more than 6 of whom shall be of the same major political party. (President Bill Clinton appoints 6 Democrats and 4 Republicans.); 5 by whoever replaces Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) in conjunction with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Delaware); 4 by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) in conjunction with the ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch (R-Utah); 5 by Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D-Washington) in conjunction with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks (D-Texas); 4 by the new House Minority Leader, who will probably be Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia), and the ranking minority member on the House Judiciary Committee, probably Carlos Moorhead (R-California).

At least 1 member appointed by the President, at least 2 members appointed by the Senate, and at least 2 members appointed by the House must be persons well-qualified to participate in the commission's examination of the subject area of the causes of the demand for drugs, with education, training, expertise, or experience in such areas as addiction, biomedicine, sociology, psychology, law, and ethnography and urban poverty (including health care, housing, education, and employment).

The commission is to give its report not later than two years from the date of its inception, and has been allocated $1.0 million for fiscal year 1996.

The Crime Bill actually contains some modest reforms of forfeiture law, including an annual audit of every State and local law enforcement agency that receives forfeiture funds, and a requirement that the government pay state and local property taxes that have accrued from the date of the forfeiture order.

The full text of the Crime Bill can be found on pages H8772 - H8867 of the Congressional Record dated Sunday, August 21, 1994.

Thanks to NORML, ACLU, FEAR, FAMM and the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation for compiling this information.

From The Activist Guide, Issue #3, September '94, DRCNet Publications section, A Guided Tour of the War on Drugs home page.

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