‘3-Time Loser’ Bill a Political Winner, but Critics Abound : Crime: Clinton is expected to back the plan for mandatory sentences in his speech to Congress. Prosecutors and prison officials see drawbacks.

While lawmakers are sure to applaud President Clinton’s expected State of the Union endorsement tonight of legislation that would require those convicted of three felonies to spend the rest of their lives in prison, many law enforcement specialists question the measure’s value in crime prevention.

Prosecutors and prison directors said they fear such a law would mean life terms for many more lower-level drug dealers or drug addicts than for the violent criminals who are targets of the legislation.

Even Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, who spent 15 years as a prosecutor, has expressed only qualified support for the idea, which calls for sentencing all violent offenders to life in prison after their third conviction. “It depends on how it’s structured,” she said recently of the Senate-passed provision described as “three strikes and you’re out.”

While they realize they are bucking strong political winds, critics of the “three-time loser” bill and other mandatory sentencing measures expect to make their case next month at House hearings on the crime bill.

Criticism also is likely at the American Bar Assn.’s “summit on crime and violence” this week in Washington. The ABA and 27 other organizations involved in criminal justice have called for an end to mandatory minimum sentences. They say the mandates result in “irrationality, disparity and discrimination in the enforcement of criminal laws, and decrease certainty and deterrence in sentencing.”

Andrew L. Sonner, state’s attorney for Montgomery County, Md., who has been in elective office 23 years, said he understands the politics of the “three-time loser” provision but regards it as off-target.

“It hasn’t been shown in the last 12 years that imprisoning more people is solving our problem,” Sonner said. “There’s a huge price tag on it, and you can’t build these prisons overnight. . . . We’ll be getting a lot of punishment out of it but not much crime prevention.”

Oliver J. Keller, past president of the American Correctional Assn., declared: “Many of the people who wind up with mandatory sentences are small-time drug dealers who are taking up valuable prison space. This country has been on a prison-building binge for over 20 years, and if that were the answer (to crime), we’d be crime-free by now.”

It now costs about $20,000 a year to keep each prisoner locked up, Keller said, so initial construction costs are only a fraction of the tax funds spent on prisons.

Joseph D. Lehman, commissioner of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, said that lawmakers are taking the responsibility for setting sentences from judges without being able to consider cases on an individual basis.

“The unfortunate thing is we politicize the issue so much,” Lehman said. “Congress needs to be aware that it’s going from punishment to preventive detention on the basis of what we think someone’s going to do in the future.”

A combination of mandatory sentences, along with some sentencing guidelines, has resulted in sending too many people to prison, Lehman contended. He said that Pennsylvania recorded a 171% increase in incarceration from 1980 to 1990 after showing virtually no increase in the previous 40 years.

Daniel L. Feldman, who chairs the Correction Committee of the New York State Assembly, argued that the law would move in the wrong direction.

“The only rational approach is to use prison space far more efficiently than we have been doing,” he said. “We should be locking up violent criminals far longer than we are doing . . . rather than locking up so many street dealers of drugs who are instantly replaceable.”

Scott Wallace, special counsel to the National Legal Aid and Defender Assn., warned that “three-time loser” laws eventually would make prisons look like nursing homes.

“We’re going to have a nation with geriatric prisoners--comatose guys in oxygen tents--and nobody will be able to turn those guys loose until they die,” Wallace said.

Despite the criticisms, however, the Clinton-backed provision is among the most politically appealing.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, cheered on the President: “Those individuals who have been convicted of three separate violent crimes have forfeited their rights to be members of our society. They should be off our streets, in jail, forever, never to plague us again.”