BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Thirty years ago, New York State led the so-called war on drugs by passing laws requiring harsh sentences even for nonviolent first-time offenders. Since then, the number of prison inmates has gone up dramatically, and so has national concern that mandatory sentencing is not fair. New York recently reduced some of its required sentences, but critics say they are still too long. Those opponents have been influenced in part by the public advocacy of a former inmate, Elaine Bartlett. Lucky Severson reports on her and the ongoing mandatory sentencing debate.

LUCKY SEVERSON: This is Elaine Bartlett, with her oldest son, Apache, in their old public housing neighborhood on Manhattan's Lower East Side. She always wears bright, cheerful colors --not what you might expect from a mother of four who spent 16 years in prison for a first-time drug offense. New York Governor George Pataki granted her clemency in 2000.

ELAINE BARTLETT (Former Inmate): That was the happiest day of my life. It was actually a snowstorm that day, and I danced out of Bedford Gates in my pink suit, my black heels, and I felt that I was reborn, that I had my life back again.

SEVERSON: Her crime, which she did not deny, was that she transported a four-ounce package of cocaine to upstate New York. It was a stupid thing, but it fit the hard-luck pattern of her life -- one brother murdered, another in prison, a third dead of AIDS. She was sentenced to 20 years.

Ms. BARTLETT: At the end, when they said "Do you have anything to say?" I said that I felt that I was being railroaded out of my life. It didn't take 16 years to learn my lesson. There are so many other things that could have been done with me in those 16 years. They could have educated me.

SEVERSON: The price she paid, and the sum society pays to keep Elaine and tens of thousands like her in prison, is the subject of an intense public debate about the ethics and value of mandatory minimum sentencing. Like the majority of U.S. lawmakers, former congressman and CNN analyst Bob Barr defends mandatory sentencing -- says it was an answer to a public outcry ...

BOB BARR (Former Congressman, R-GA, and CNN Analyst): ... and a general sense on the part of the public that drug usage, particularly cocaine, which really became in vogue in the later part of the 1970s, was getting out of hand, and they were seeing people or perceived they were seeing people getting caught, going into prison, and getting out immediately.

SEVERSON: Mandatory sentencing laws took off with the skyrocketing drug crime of the '70s and '80s. Sentences, both federal and state, are based on the weight and type of the drugs and vary from five years to life in prison.

(To Mr. Barr): Have they worked?

Mr. BARR: They have worked. As good and consistently as we had hoped? No. But they have worked, I do believe. I think it's a very sound idea, a very appropriate idea or way to deal with serious offenders.

SEVERSON: If success is measured in numbers, mandatory sentences have worked. Partly as a result, there are now more Americans in prison than ever before, about two million, at an average cost of about $23,000 to house each inmate each year. But, former U.S. District Judge John Martin says, the guidelines are often too harsh and target the wrong people.

Judge JOHN MARTIN (Former U.S. District Judge): It's poor law enforcement because you're not targeting the right people. You're imposing the sentences on people who don't deserve them, where you should be targeting the sentences for the major dealers.

SEVERSON: Consider Tammi Bloom. She's been in a federal prison in Florida-- six years of a 20-year sentence. Her husband and his girlfriend were convicted of dealing drugs and one of them implicated Tammi in a minor role. But after the two plea-bargained, this mother of two ended up with the longest sentence.

TAMMI BLOOM (Inmate, Coleman Federal Correctional Institution, Florida): The first thing I thought was that, my God, they are taking me away from my children. What am I going to do? What are they going to do? You make one mistake, and your life is taken away from you. I can guarantee you, when they handcuffed me to go to county jail, that was enough for me. I didn't need the rest of it.

SEVERSON: Judge Martin says if inmates like Tammi Bloom and Elaine Bartlett had information to trade, they could have bargained for a reduced sentence.

Judge MARTIN: The lower-level people don't have enough information for the prosecutor to want their cooperation, so it's often the case it's the major dealer who gets the value of the cooperation, and the people lower down the line get the severe sentence.

Ms. BARTLETT: The 16 years that I was in a maximum facility for women, I haven't met one kingpin.

SEVERSON: The trend toward state mandatory sentences started here in New York in 1973 with moderate Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The governor, who wanted to be president, needed more convincingly conservative credentials, so he got enacted the toughest drug laws in the country -- the same laws that put Elaine Bartlett behind bars for longer than most convicted killers.

Of the people behind bars in New York State with mandatory sentences, over 90 percent are African Americans and Hispanics. Julie Stewart, of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, says the laws indirectly target minorities.