Committee Debates Sentences For Small-Time Drug Dealers

Madison, WI -- The state's corrections chief said Friday a committee should consider sending small-time drug dealers to rehabilitation and training programs instead of prison.

"If you're going to spend $20,000 a year to give someone a brief time out, might not it be worthwhile to look at an expenditure of $20,000" for programs that give them education and vocational training, said Department of Corrections secretary Michael Sullivan, who is leaving the post in January.

Many people convicted of selling small amounts of drugs are sentenced to two to four years in prison, but that time could be better spent giving such convicts a chance to get an education and learn job skills, Sullivan told the 18-member Criminal Penalties Study Committee.

The committee is examining ways to make the state's sentencing guidelines tougher under legislation Gov. Tommy Thompson signed in June.

The law, which goes into effect Dec. 31, 1999, eliminates parole and lengthens prison terms for some felonies. It also requires that convicts serve out their full prison terms.

The committee has until April 1999 to recommend changes to the state Legislature.

State prison officials are dealing with overcrowded prisons, and the state has contracted with public and private out-of-state facilities to house some Wisconsin inmates.

Asked if sending drug traffickers to rehabilitation instead of jail was a way to reduce over crowding, Sullivan said only that the committee should study alternatives to incarcerating such convicts.

He said, however, that "sending people to prison doesn't necessarily eliminate the drugs."

Milwaukee county aggressively prosecutes drug dealers, yet it still has a drug problem, he said.

Milwaukee County accounts for half of all drug traffickers, according to a corrections department study comparing dealers statewide who were sentenced for the first time.

Milwaukee County prosecutor Pat Kenney defended keeping dealers in prison.

"It's been argued that incarceration of small-time dealers is too expensive," Kenney said. "Our office rejects that approach."

In one neighborhood where homes are riddled with bullet holes from drug-related gun fights, Kenney knows of an elderly Milwaukee woman who sleeps in her living room because her bedroom is next to an alley where drug transactions take place.

The district attorney's office prosecutes many dealers who usually carry minimal amounts of drugs, such as $25 worth of heroin, he said.

Just because drug sellers have small amounts of drugs on them does not mean they are small-time dealers, Kenney said.

They carry small amounts of drugs and money in case they are robbed, he said.

>From November 1996 to October 1998, a total of 449 drug traffickers statewide sentenced for the first time received terms of three years or less in prison. The majority, or 332, were from Milwaukee, department statistics showed.

But incarcerating such dealers for short prison terms is not effective, Madison defense attorney Steve Hurley said.

"What we've done is replaced the faces, replaced the street corner," he said. "We haven't solved the problem."

About 75 percent of drug dealers are designated as needing drug or alcohol treatment, he said. About 60 percent receive such services in prison.

The prison system cannot accommodate the number of convicts who need such treatments, Sullivan said.

Communities should offer programs that would provide dealers educational, and vocational training and jobs so "they are not returning to that lifestyle" of drug trafficking, Sullivan said. Communities could form advisory boards that would monitor released drug dealers and make sure they are going to work, he said.

"It's a community problem, not a Department of Corrections problem," he said.

Copyright 1998, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

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