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Study: mandatory minimum drug sentences don't work
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders may play well with voters, but a new study by the Rand Corporation suggests they are ineffective.
The Rand report released Monday said such sentences, imposed by both federal and state courts, don't do enough to cut either drug use or drug-related crime. Rand researchers, using a mathematical model, focused on cocaine.
"The bottom line is that only decision makers who are very myopic would find long sentences to be appealing," said study leader Jonathan Caulkins of Rand's Drug Policy Research Center.
Mandatory jail and prison sentences may cut consumption and crime in the short run, the study said. But over the long run, taxpayer dollars are better spent using standard sentencing of high-level dealers and putting heavy drug users into treatment programs, it said.
"A principal reason why the sentences are not more cost effective is the high cost of incarceration," said Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon University professor.
More specifically, the nonprofit think tank's study calculated that if $1 million more were spent on each drug strategy, over 15 years:
-- Mandatory minimums would reduce national cocaine consumption by 13 kilograms. Conventional enforcement would cut it by 27 kilograms; treatment of heavy users would slash it by more than 100 kilograms.
-- Conventional law enforcement -- including more arrests of drug dealers, confiscations, prosecutions and standard-length prison terms -- would eliminate 70 percent more crimes against people than mandatory minimums. The average mandatory minimum sentence, usually triggered by possession of a fixed amount of drugs, is 6.7 years; the average conventional sentence is 1.1 years.
-- Treatment of heavy users would reduce about 10 times more serious crime against people and property than conventional law enforcement and 15 times more than mandatory minimums -- even though an average of only 13 percent of those receiving treatment kick their drug habits.
Because nearly all the cost of treatment, $1,800 per person, occurs in the first year, incarceration initially looks better. But after the second year, treatment becomes dramatically more cost-effective as benefits from heavy users who quit drugs continue without additional cost, Caulkins said.
Quick to endorse the study was the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, whose membership includes some 12,000 jail and prison inmates.
"Mandatory sentences are counterproductive, that they are more harmful to the community than helpful and this study indicates not only that, but they're a big waste of money," said Jeff Stewart, a member of the group.
Supporters of mandatory sentencing argue that it's meant both to keep drug offenders out of circulation and to act as a deterrent to would-be violators.
"I think Rand has pushed this social agenda for a long time," said Florida Republican Rep. Bill McCollum of the House Judiciary Committee. "They have always been arguing it is not economically appropriate to spend money on incarceration of any form, let alone minimum mandatories ... in drug areas."
Still, National Drug Policy Director Barry McCaffery said on first reading, the Rand report makes sense.
"We have a failed social policy that has ended up with undue incarceration and inadequate drug treatment, and we are simply going to have to readdress this issue," McCaffery said.
A new debate is beginning over the federal minimums for cocaine -- five years in prison for possessing or selling 5 grams of crack cocaine or 500 grams of powder cocaine.
But given that opposition to mandatory sentences brings charges of soft on crime, there may not be any serious effort anytime soon to undo them on Capitol Hill.
Correspondent Gene Randall and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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