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Harsh drug terms may be eased
Treatment backed over sentences
BY MICHAEL VIRTANEN The Associated Press

    Gov. David Paterson and legislative leaders have agreed to ease drug laws that were once among the harshest in the nation and led a movement more than 30 years ago toward mandatory prison terms.
    The agreement rolls back some of the sentencing provisions pushed through the Legislature in 1973 by then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican who said they were needed to fight a drug-related “reign of terror.” The strictest provisions were removed in 2004.
    Critics have long claimed the laws were racist and draconian, crowding prisons with people who would be better served with treatment. The planned changes would eliminate mandatory minimum terms for some low-level nonviolent drug felonies, which could cut the prison population by thousands.
    “In addition to being unjust, these policies are ineffective,” Paterson said Friday, surrounded by Democratic lawmakers and New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman.
    Three decades have shown the core issue is often addiction, “a treatable illness,” with far lower recidivism for those who get treatment instead of prison, the governor said.
    At the same time, penalties will be toughened for drug kingpins and dealers who sell to children, Paterson said. The measure will be part of the state’s budget package, he said. Lawmakers are trying to enact it by next week.
    Across the nation, some states have been pushing sentencing reform to empty prisons and cut costs amid growing budget difficulties. New York’s inmate total has already dropped by 10,000 in a decade to about 60,000, with proposals to close and consolidate prisons thwarted by lawmakers concerned about losing state jobs.
    Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, a Queens Democrat, said Friday it costs the state $45,000 a year to house each offender and the changes are expected to eventually reduce the state’s prison population by more than 10,000 additional inmates, producing huge cost savings.
    If the reforms are approved, about 1,500 inmates would be eligible to apply for resentencing but are not assured of shorter sentences, Paterson said.
    Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat whose chamber passed a version of the legislation 98-46, said more effective residential drug treatment costs $15,000, or onethird the cost of prison.
    “We’re establishing a more just, more humane, more effective policy for the state of New York,” he said.
    Detailed legislative language wasn’t released Friday. Advocates said some differences between the Assembly bill and governor’s proposal were still being discussed.
    The legislation would give judges discretion to sentence certain nonviolent and lower-felony offenders — both first-time and repeat — to local jail, probation or a combination. Some could be sent to a six-month military-style shock camp or a prison-run drug-treatment facility.
    Under current law, second possession of a half-gram of cocaine, a Class D felony, requires 3 1 /2 years in prison, said Gabriel Sayegh, project director of the Drug Policy Alliance. The revisions would leave a sentence up to the judge.
    One major subtext is race, since 90 percent of those locked up under New York’s drugs laws are minorities, Sayegh said.
    “There’s no evidence anywhere to suggest that blacks and Latinos are the ones that are the predominant users or sellers of drugs that would justify the racial disparities in New York,” he said. “This is the most pernicious aspect to us.”
    In “exceptional circumstances,” judges could approve prejudgment diversion drug-abuse programs and dismiss charges, said Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Assembly Committee on Correction.
    Lippman said the judiciary’s experience “shows increasing judicial discretion and expanding opportunities for treatment [programs].”
    Senate Democrats said the initial cost for expanded drug treatment programs isn’t yet known, but federal stimulus money is available for it, and over time the change should save money.
    Republicans said the changes would protect drug dealers and release criminals into the community. They also argued they should not be included as part of the budget vote.
    They said the maneuver ties the hands of lawmakers, and also gives political cover to those who choose to go along with the wishes of Democratic leaders.
    “There’s only one purpose, that is to coddle the criminals,” said Sen. Martin Golden, a Brooklyn Republican.
    Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, described the proposed reforms as a breakthrough but said they would still leave some harsh provisions intact. He said there are about 12,000 drug offenders in state prison, and he said 35 to 45 percent would have been eligible for judicial diversion under the proposed reforms.
    “The Rockefeller drug laws, for better or..................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00101

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Rockefeller Drug Laws have been a dismal, costly failure for N.Y.

    The governor and Legislature are at long last considering reform of the ill-conceived Rockefeller Drug Laws, which have imprisoned nearly 200,000 New Yorkers since they were enacted in 1973. The laws were supposed to punish big-time dealers, but they have fallen most heavily on nonviolent, low-level offenders.
    Clearly the Rockefeller Drug Laws haven’t worked. (Has anyone noticed a decline in drug problems during the last 36 years?) Worse, they have been wasteful, harmful and discriminatory.
    Vast numbers of people locked up under these laws suffer from addiction and mental illness. It costs $50,000 a year to keep them in jail. Treating them in programs that might actually help them can cost as little as $14,000 a year. That difference adds up to more than $250 million annually. You can hire a lot of cops, fill a lot of potholes, or send a lot of kids to college with money like that.
    Whole neighborhoods have been destroyed by these laws. More than 25,000 children have suffered as parents have been sent to prison, and 60 percent of those who have been incarcerated can’t find work for at least a year after release.
    Although white folks are the primary users of illegal drugs — 72 percent of those who have used illegal drugs are white — sentencing inequities created by the Rockefeller Drug Laws have resulted in a huge racial disparity. More than 90 percent of those incarcerated under these laws are black or Latino. Any reform of these laws should do away with mandatory-minimum sentences and give back to judges the authority to exercise discretion in sentencing. Eligibility for alternatives to incarceration should be expanded. There should be sentencing relief for those currently serving unconscionably long prison terms. Finally, money saved by diverting people from prison should be reinvested in the neighborhoods that have been most severely damaged by the laws.
    Finally, there’s the whole constitutional right-to-privacy issue. Taking drugs may be stupid, but the Constitution does not outlaw stupidity — a fact for which we have ample evidence every day.

    FRANK DONEGAN
    Schenectady     

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EDITORIALS Draconian Rocky Drug Laws, RIP

    Getting rid of the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws will save New York state oodles of money, but that’s just one of many good reasons for doing so.
    The laws, passed in response to a heroin epidemic in the early 1970s, have treated all drug dealers the same, and too harshly — throwing them in prison for lengthy terms. Some of the criminals have deserved it, having committed violent crimes in addition to selling large quantities of drugs, but others were simply addicts or recreational users selling relatively small quantities of drugs to raise cash for their next fix.
    The agreement between the governor and legislative leaders would give judges discretion when it comes to sentencing all but the most serious drug offenders; instead of prison, they could order treatment for first-time, nonviolent offenders.
    Treatment makes far more sense than prison not only because it’s cheaper ($14,000 to $30,000, depending on whether the treatment is residential or outpatient, vs. $45,000-$50,000 per year for incarceration), but because it reduces the likelihood of repeat drug-related offenses by roughly one-third.
    There is also evidence to suggest that the Rocky Drug Laws have been inconsistently enforced: Blacks and Latinos account for an overwhelming majority of those in prison for violations, suggesting that they take and sell more drugs than whites; yet studies have shown that whites account for 70-plus percent of illegal drug use.
    The state spends $600 million a year to incarcerate drug offenders. Getting the lowlevel, nonviolent ones into treatment programs is a far better way to rehabilitate them, and at much lower cost.

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In Western literature Soma often refers to some form of intoxicating drug; it is also the brand name of the prescription muscle relaxant Carisoprodol.

In Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World, Soma is a popular dream-inducing drug. It provides an easy escape from the hassles of daily life and is employed by the government as a method of control through pleasure. It is ubiquitous and ordinary among the culture of the novel and everyone is shown to use it at some point, in various situations: sex, relaxation, concentration, confidence. It is seemingly a single-chemical combination of many of today's drugs' effects, giving its users the full hedonistic spectrum depending on dosage.

Soma is the central theme of the poem The Brewing of Soma by the American Quaker poet, John Whittier (1807-1892) from which the well-known Christian hymn "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" is derived. Whittier here portrays the drinking of soma as distracting the mind from the proper worship of God.

In the book Junkie, author William S. Burroughs refers to soma as a non-addictive, high-quality form of opium said to exist in ancient India.

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CAPITAL REGION
Reform of drug laws may burden counties
With fewer in state prison, jails could see surge
BY STEPHEN WILLIAMS Gazette Reporter

    This year’s reform of the state’s Rockefeller drug laws will end harsh sentences for many drug offenders, sending fewer of them to long terms in state prison.
    But county governments — which are responsible for local jails, probation supervision and even overseeing addiction treatment — are afraid that it will mean higher costs for them.
    That’s because people convicted of drug crimes who have been automatically going to state prison for the past 36 years under Rockefeller-era mandatory sentencing guidelines will end up under county-supervised probation or in county jails instead.
    “County probation offices and jails do not have the capacity to handle the increased caseload these reforms will produce,” said Stephen J. Acquario, executive director of the New York State Association of Counties.
    The new law goes into effect in early October, six months after adoption of the state budget.
Many sentences under the new law are likely to involve serving a few months in a local jail followed by three to five years of supervised probation.
Albany County’s probation department is anticipating 150 to 200 new cases a year, said Mary Duryea, a spokesman for County Executive Michael Breslin.
“Obviously, it will put a strain on staff and resources,” she said.
There may also be higher demand for county-run alcohol, drug and mental health treatment programs, Duryea said. Offenders in those programs will probably be under probation supervision.
    State officials say there will be little overall impact on local jail inmate numbers, but they recognize that there will be a financial impact on county probation programs, said Marissa Shorenstein, a spokeswoman for Gov. David Paterson.
    “These are things we will look closely at as the law goes forward,” Shorenstein said.
    In many counties, probation officers already have high caseloads, and more drug cases could create the need to hire more officers.
    “We don’t have a hard and fast figure in terms of the fiscal impact, but there will be a fiscal impact on county taxpayers,” said Mark LaVigne, an Association of Counties spokesman.
    Local counties plan to keep a close watch on how the reform plays out in courtrooms across the state and what it does to their costs.
    Wilton Supervisor Arthur Johnson, chairman of the Saratoga County Board of Supervisors, said, “I don’t think they always consider the trickle-down effect.”
    The Rockefeller laws, adopted in 1973 and named for their most prominent champion, then-Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, set mandatory state prison sentences for many narcotics offenses, with mandatory lifetime maximums for some crimes.
    Adopted at a time when a heroin epidemic gripped inner cities, the Rockefeller laws were the harshest drug laws in the country at the time. Other states followed suit, though many have since backed off of the most severe penalties.
    This year’s reforms were the culmination of years of effort by people who thought the laws were too harsh to nonviolent offenders.
MAJOR CHANGES
    The Rockefeller laws’ lifetime sentence provisions were repealed in 2004, but mandatory state prison sentences were left in place until now, with changes blocked by the Republican-controlled state Senate.
    Democrats this year took control of the Senate for the first time since the 1960s.
    Paterson, a critic of the laws throughout his public career, spearheaded the revisions as part of the 2009-10 state budget agreement.
    While relaxing penalties for lower-level drug crimes, the law also imposes new state prison penalties for crimes such as selling drugs to a child and on high-level drug traffickers.
    “The law strikes a careful and appropriate balance to ensure that nonviolent addicted offenders get the treatment they need while predatory kingpins get the punishment they deserve,” Paterson said in a statement released at the April 24 bill-signing ceremony................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar01301

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State helps ease drug offenders’ release
Sunday, July 19, 2009
By Sara Foss (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

NEW YORK STATE — In the fall, low-level drug offenders will begin trickling out of state prisons and into treatment programs under the landmark state drug law reforms passed earlier this year.
Legislation dismantling most of the state’s strict Rockefeller drug laws was signed into law in April by Gov. David Paterson. The bill repealed many of the state’s mandatory minimum prison sentences for lower-level drug offenders.
By this fall, the state will have 500 new beds in residential treatment facilities, according to Dianne Henk, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, OASAS. An additional 235 beds have been designated for some freed under the law changes.
“The wheels are starting to move,” said Gabriel Sayegh, project director of the New York City-based Drug Policy Alliance, which pushed for the changes. “This represents a significant shift in how we approach questions of drug dependency and use.”
The new approach, he said, emphasizes public health. “It’s very exciting.”
Sayegh and other advocates say the Rockefeller laws filled the state’s prisons with nonviolent drug users who would have been better served by treatment and alternative programs. The Rockefeller drug laws were enacted in 1973 and were among the harshest in the nation.
Under the reforms, judges can sentence nonviolent and lower-felony offenders to jail, probation or a combination of the two, a six-month military style shock camp or a prison-run drug treatment facility.
Opponents have said the new laws will send criminals back into the community.
In April, Paterson announced the creation of the Addictions Collaborative to Improve Outcomes for New York, an initiative to address alcohol, drug and gambling addictions. Among other things, ACTION will monitor and coordinate implementation of the drug law reforms.............>>>>..........>>>>..........http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/jul/19/0719_druglaws/