PAGING FOX BUTTERFIELD:

Cracking Open: Michael Short knows he was wrong to sell crack cocaine, but he questions whether he needed 15 years in prison to learn his lesson. Now some of the politicians who helped put him there are wondering, too. (Vanessa M. Gezari, June 1, 2008, Washington Post)

ON HIS 18TH DAY OF FREEDOM, Michael Short awakened before dawn. In prison, corrections officers had paced the halls at night, jingling keys and shining flashlights. Now Mike slept fitfully, even in a king-size bed.

It was a damp, gray Tuesday late in February. He slipped on a pinstriped shirt that hid his tattoos, slid his feet into shiny new loafers and rubbed coconut oil into his hair, cut razor-straight at the temples and flecked with gray. He was 36, with a basketball player's long-legged gait and the lined brow of a man well acquainted with consequences. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, he nervously knotted a silver-and-white tie that his girlfriend had bought him at Macy's.

On days like this, he wished the past were a room with a door you could close, a place you could walk away from, as he had walked away from prison after President Bush commuted his sentence. But the past wasn't like that, at least not for him. Over breakfast, he practiced the testimony he was scheduled to deliver that afternoon before a congressional subcommittee: My name is Michael Short. I am here because in 1992 I was sentenced for selling crack cocaine. Before that, I had never spent a day in prison. I came from a good family. I had no criminal history. I was not a violent offender. But I was sentenced to serve nearly 20 years. I was 21 years old. [...]

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established the mandatory minimum drug sentences that remain in effect today. It imposed a five-year mandatory prison term for first-time trafficking of five or more grams of crack or 500 grams of powder, and a 10-year mandatory minimum for first-time trafficking of 50 grams of crack or five kilos of powder. In drug policy circles, this is known as the "100-to-1 drug quantity ratio," and it has hit African Americans hardest because they are more likely to live in the neighborhoods where crack cocaine is used and sold, even though, in absolute numbers, most crack users are white. In 2006, 82 percent of crack offenders sentenced under federal law were African American, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency set up to develop a national sentencing policy for the federal courts.

In 1988, Congress got even tougher, passing a law that made simple possession of five grams of crack punishable by a mandatory minimum five-year prison term. First-time possession of any amount of any other controlled substance, including powder cocaine, is a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of a year in prison. The only exception is flunitrazepan, also known as Rohypnol, the "date rape drug," which carries a maximum three-year penalty for first-time possession.

Five basic suppositions guided lawmakers in setting such high penalties for crack, according to research by the Sentencing Commission.

Crack is extremely addictive, and because crack users needed to get high more frequently and tended to have less money than powder users, they were more likely to engage in criminal behavior to support their addictions, creating at least a perceived link between crack use and violence. Crack was considered especially dangerous, particularly to fetuses. Children were also used as lookouts by dealers and exposed to the drug as addicts. And crack's potency and low price -- about $10 for two small pieces compared with $100 for a gram of powder cocaine in 1986-- meant that almost anyone could afford it.

President Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in late October 1986. The following week, the Democrats took back the Senate. Over the next two decades, the federal prison population would grow from about 38,000 to more than 200,000; more than half the current inmates are drug offenders. The average amount of crack that federal offenders were convicted of trafficking in 2006 was 51 grams, about the weight of a candy bar; their average prison sentence was 10 years, according to the Sentencing Commission.

"If we were sophisticated in the metric system, we would have known that the people we're interested in, like [Colombian Pablo] Escobar, are moving a ton, a million grams," Sterling said. "Are we winning the war on drugs? No. The federal government is wasting the resources."

THE YEAR AFTER LEN BIAS DIED, Mike Short's team at Northwestern won the state championship. He and his teammates stormed the court at the University of Maryland's Cole Field House in jubilation, and some leapt for the rim and held on, shattering a fiberglass backboard. Their joy signaled intense relief. It had been a tough season, with rival players mocking Jay Bias over his brother's drug-induced death and Northwestern players fighting back. Several had been suspended.

Mike, a sophmore, wasn't among them, but in his senior year he was cut from the team over "differences of opinion" with a new coach, he said. His mother met with teachers and administrators, who offered to reinstate him, but Mike refused. "It's my fault for being angry like that, holding resentment," he said. "That's something that still haunts me."

He switched to pickup games on street courts in suburban Maryland, where drug dealers and athletes mingled like mismatched dancing partners. Dealers would sometimes hand out money to winning players or buy them clothes. People noticed Mike's skill and started paying him as much as $500 to play in high-stakes games, he said. He knew drugs were illegal, and his training as an athlete dissuaded him from using them. He says he never tried cocaine and only smoked marijuana once. He didn't need money. "But then some of us would see how easy it is, and it's hard to turn down $1,000 or $2,000 when you don't have to do anything," he said.

His dealing began with casual conversations with people from school, the neighborhood and guys he met on the courts. He wasn't asked to do much -- most of the time, he just made a phone call or delivered a package, often to people he knew and trusted -- and dealing became part of the fabric of his social life. He would go bowling and meet someone else in the business, or arrange a handoff to a friend at a local barbershop. He bought himself stylish new clothes, but he didn't buy a car because he worried that his mother, Shirley Short, would catch on. Even so, when he showed up in a pair of $100 tennis shoes that she hadn't bought for him, when his friends parked their own flashy cars outside, she guessed the truth. About a year before Mike got arrested, his mother told him to stop. He didn't see why he should.

"I was like, Man, it's just too sweet of a deal," he recalled. "There's no violence involved. Why not sell it, make my $500, and go on about my business?"

The violence that was invisible to him was apparent to anyone who read the newspaper or had the misfortune to live in one of the impoverished urban neighborhoods favored by street dealers. In 1989, Washington had 434 homicides, more per capita than any other U.S. city.

The system worked...change it!

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 1, 2008 5:07 PM