On April 3, our House of Representatives passed House Bill 71, which seeks to repeal mandatory minimum drug laws and return sentencing discretion to our judiciary. This bill has been transferred from the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Senate Executive Committee to be heard prior to June 30.

As a former criminal justice practitioner with nearly 25 years experience within the system, I am persuaded this legislation will contribute to reducing recidivism, costly prison construction and overcrowding.

Prior to the felt effects of mandatory minimum drug laws, I served as a Probation/Parole Officer. During this period it was standard practice for cases received from the courts to include Pre-sentence Investigation Reports.

Judges, with the assistance of these reports, used their discretion to sentence offenders to treatment programs with probation supervision or to prison.

Today, because mandatory minimum sentencing laws and the high percentage of cases plea-bargained have made these reports irrelevant, most offenders are sentenced without. The consequences of their absence are felt throughout the system by prison and probation/parole officials who have little information about the offender, his or her crime, education, substance abuse or mental health issues when deciding security and supervision levels and treatment programs.

This translates into inadequate rehabilitation and re-entry planning, which I am convinced, is one of the factors contributing to Delaware's high recidivism rate.

Statistics indicate that two-thirds of inmates released return to prison. In 1982, Delaware's prison population was less than 1,800; the current prison population is over 7,000. As an inmate classification officer, I saw our prisons become warehouses for minorities, the poor and men and women convicted under our drug laws for transporting drugs for a drug kingpin who was never caught.

Their stories, captured in classification intake documents, were chilling and depressing.

By 1991, when I began chairing the Board of Parole, prison overcrowding and construction spending were escalating, attributed in part to mandatory minimum sentencing policies and the abolition of parole under the Truth-In-Sentencing Act.

More than 75 percent of new law sentence modification cases were for offenders sentenced under the mandatory minimum drug laws, with the primary request for intensive substance abuse treatment.

Opponents of HB 71 have said that placing offenders in a treatment program rather than prison reflects a "soft on crime" approach. Quite the opposite is true. It was not unusual for an offender to reject a treatment program as being "too tough" and opt to serve the prison sentence.

A sentence to probation with the requirement to enter and complete a rigorous treatment program can be harder time than prison.

Opponents have also stated that mandatory minimum drug offenders represent a small percentage of our prison population. I have seen offenders enter prison on a drug sentence to return years later on violence against person offenses where the underlying cause was an addiction problem not addressed the first time.

If judges had the discretion to provide sentences tailored to individual needs while considering risks to the community, I believe the cycle of addiction might have been interrupted before a seriously violent offense occurred.

Improving public safety comes from focusing on front-end, proactive rather than back-end, reactive approaches. Judicial discretion provides not only an opportunity to interrupt addiction at the front-end of the system and, thus, cut recidivism, but also allows judges to craft a stiffer prison sentence for drug dealers and others who pose a substantial risk to the public.

It is clearly in the public interest for HB 71 -- which has the potential to contain prison construction costs and improve public safety by reducing recidivism and which enjoys enormous support from within the legal community, numerous organizations and the general public -- to have its day in the Senate so that all perspectives can be openly and fairly considered. There is no question that supporters and opponents of HB 71 share the viewpoint that public safety is the paramount concern.

The difference, is that HB 71 is one aspect of a long-term plan that can move us toward stronger, more stable communities, eventually allowing a reallocation of resources currently used to expand prisons to schools and community programs.

Marlene Lichtenstadter has 25 years experience working in the criminal justice field. She serves on the Board of Directors of SURJ and the Board of Directors of the Delaware Center for Justice.