HILADELPHIA - The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson yesterday demanded that Republican and Democratic leaders start sending nonviolent drug abusers to treatment centers rather than to the nation's crowded prisons.
''We have 2 million people in prison. That is an international scandal,'' said Jackson, leader of the Rainbow Coalition. Inmates ''come to prison sicker ... and come out slicker,'' he said. ''We have to wipe out recidivism.''
Jackson was the main draw yesterday at the Shadow Convention, an alternative event organized by Common Cause, conservative commentator Arianna Huffington, and a host of public interest groups to focus on issues they say are being ignored by the Republican National Convention.
According to Jackson, 80 percent of the inmates in prison on drug arrests have been charged with nonviolent crimes. He also said most of the people crowding the prisons are either African-American or Hispanic.
Said one person who heard the speech, Terry Jackson, a recovering addict from Philadelphia who is not related to the civil rights leader, ''Sending drug addicts to prison really doesn't do anything but harden a person.''
While Jesse Jackson's fire-and-brimstone speech contrasted with the scholarly but emotional address of retired General Colin Powell the previous night at the GOP convention, their messages were similar.
Jackson echoed Powell, the Republican Party's most prominent African-American figure, who told the delegates that blacks are cynical about the party's opposition to affirmative action. Jackson, who in 1984, was the first African-American to make a serious run for the White House, said building schools, not prisons, would help curb crime and violence in urban communities.
''I believe Colin Powell was a statesman ... I think he is correct to stand on the platform and preach moral values,'' Jackson said.
But Jackson said Powell's compassionate appeal for inclusiveness does not reflect the conservative ideologies of the party's leaders, such as Senators Trent Lott of Mississippi and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, another high-profile civil rights leader, criticized the Republican's strategic appeal to minorities and women during the convention. Sharpton, who talked to reporters as he walked through the media pavilion yesterday, said he was invited to the GOP convention by Armstrong Williams, a black Republican who is a radio commentator. Sharpton said the GOP is using blacks and Hispanics to show a moderate face when most party members and delegates are wealthy white men.
Jackson and Sharpton also said Governor George W. Bush's choice of Dick Cheney, a former Wyoming congressman and former defense secretary, as a running mate is proof that the party is not changing its views.
''It's hard to say let's have a new game when you are playing with your same old teammates on the field,'' Sharpton said.
