Federal prisons are packing in record numbers of inmates, most of them young and African American for crimes involving small amounts of crack cocaine. Since young African Americans play at best a minor role in cocaine trafficking, it is becoming clear that current drug policy is racially biased as well as ineffective. PNS commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of "The Disappearance of Black Leadership." E-mail him at ehutchi344@aol.com.

The prison juggernaut slowed down slightly in the states in 1999. But the federal government more than picked up the slack.

According to a Justice Department report, the number jailed in federal prisons grew by 11,000 in 1999. Most were there for drug offenses.

To almost no one's surprise, most of these drug offenders were young African-Americans. Putting thousands of black men behind bars for mostly non-violent drug offenses has had staggering consequences.

It has wreaked massive social and political havoc on families and communities.

It has been the single biggest reason for the bloat in federal spending on prison construction, maintenance, and an escalating number of prosecutors to handle the continuing flood of drug cases.

The standard reasons given for criminalizing practically an entire generation of young blacks is that they are poor, crime-prone, and lack family values. More compelling reason can still be summed up in four words -- racially biased drug laws.

Reports and studies by the Justice Department, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, universities and foundations confirm that:

- Far more whites use and deal drugs including crack cocaine than blacks.

- The overwhelming majority of those prosecuted in federal courts for drug possession and sale (mostly small amounts of crack cocaine) and given stiff mandatory sentences of ten years to life are African-American.

- Only five percent of those sentenced to jail terms are major dealers

- There is a massive, deep disparity in sentencing of blacks (crack cocaine) and whites (powdered cocaine) by federal and state courts.

Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno have given their tepid support to eliminate the gaping racial disparities in the drug laws. Yet the reconstituted Sentencing Commission, which recently moved swiftly to amend, revise, and upgrade sentences for a range of offenses but said nothing about amending the drug sentencing laws.

This scapegoating of blacks for America's crime and drug problem actually began in the 1980s. The Republican conservatives' assault on job, income, and social service programs, a crumbling educational system, and industrial shrinkage dumped more blacks on the streets with nowhere to go. Some chose guns, gangs, crime and drugs.

Big cuts in welfare, social services, and skills training programs under the Clinton administration have dumped not only more young black males but more black women on the streets. According to the Bureau of Justice report the number of women in U.S. prisons has doubled since 1990 to a record 100,000.

Much of the media quickly turned the drug problem into a black problem and played it big. Many frightened Americans readily gave their blessing to drug sweeps, random vehicle checks, marginally legal searches and seizures, evictions.

As for law enforcement in the ghettos and barrios, the denial of constitutional protections, of due process and privacy made a mockery of the criminal justice system to many blacks and Latinos.

Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey, who has mightily defended the administration's policy in the past, shifted gears recently and now brands the disastrous approach a case of "bad drug policy and bad law enforcement."

The way to right the ship and change bad drug policy into good policy and good law enforcement is not to build more prisons, pass tougher laws, or even, as some suggest, equalize sentences for crack and powdered cocaine. This would only nail more small time white users and dealers.

The answer is to shift billions from prisons to programs for drug education, treatment and prevention, do away with the mandatory sentencing laws of drug-related offenses and restore sentencing discretion to judges, target high level dealers for prosecution, and end drug profiling and random stops of black and Latino motorists.

McCaffrey and other federal officials are finally paying some lip-service at least to the pathetic truth that billions are being squandered on a wasteful, flawed drug policy that targets mostly poor and desperate small time black drug offenders. They have done nothing to change that policy. Until they do more and more young black men and women will continue to stuff federal prison cells.