GreekChat.com Forums - Rockerfeller Drug Law- NY, NY protest 6/4/03

MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT THE ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS
Myth: The Rockefeller Drug Laws “have been effectively utilized by law enforcement to protect our communities….”

Fact: The Rockefeller Drug Laws have not succeeded in making our communities safer. Today, up to one million New Yorkers use drugs and an estimated 500,000 are addicts or abusers. Drugs are cheaper and more readily available to the public than they were 20 years ago. NY’s highest court acknowledged that the “harsh mandatory treatment of drug offenders…has failed to deter drug trafficking or to control the epidemic of drug abuse in society, and has resulted in the incarceration of many offenders whose crimes arose out of their own addiction and for whom the costs of imprisonment would have been better spent on treatment and rehabilitation.”

Myth: “The extraordinary statewide reductions in violent crime that we have enjoyed in recent years have been achieved, in significant part, by enforcing tough drug laws….”

Fact: Violent crime was increasing until the mid 1990’s, at the same time that significantly more drug offenders were being imprisoned. Then, violent crime began dropping dramatically in localities across the nation, regardless of their policing tactics, the harshness of their drug laws, or the extent to which the laws were enforced, all of which vary from state to state and community to community. There is evidence that drug treatment reduces crime associated with the narcotics trade more effectively than incarceration: a 1997 study by RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center concluded that treatment, significantly less costly than imprisonment, reduces 15 times more serious crime than mandatory minimum sentences.

Myth: Most people imprisoned under our drug laws are violent offenders.

Fact: According to official statistics from the NYS Dept of Correctional Services (DOCS), drug law offenders are overwhelmingly non-violent. Nearly 80% of drug offenders in prison have never been convicted of a violent felony; about half have never even been arrested for one.

Myth: The majority of imprisoned drug offenders are drug kingpins.

Fact: Of the over 9,000 drug offenders sent to state prison in 1998, only about 50 were convicted under the most serious provision of the drug laws. Nearly 60% of the drug offenders in NYS prisons today were convicted of selling or possessing only small drug amounts—amounts that are classified under the 3 lowest felony categories. The vast majority of offenders convicted of selling are not kingpins or in high-level drug trafficking positions. Moreover, many minor dealers are drug abusers who sell to support their own habits. A Manhattan Institute report co-authored by criminologist John J. DiIulio, Jr. concluded that, far from addressing the root causes of why people sell drugs, “the main effect of imprisoning drug sellers…is merely to open the market for another seller.”

Why is this the case? The main criterion for guilt under the laws is not the offenders’ role in narcotics transactions, but the amount of drugs in their possession at the time of arrest. Drug kingpins rarely carry narcotics; they hire other people to transport drugs for them. These “foot soldiers” get caught literally holding the bag. The drug laws’ weight provision provides an incentive to police and prosecutors to concentrate on minor dealers and users who are on the street with drugs in their possession, rather than on the drug trade’s major profiteers.

Myth: “…sweeping changes that would effectively dismantle [the drug] laws… would devastate our communities and cripple law enforcement efforts to curb drug distribution.”

Fact: There is no statistical basis for this claim. Even if the drug laws were repealed, judges would have the authority to sentence drug offenders to prison. Judges would make decisions after weighing the views of the prosecution and the defense. Mandatory sentencing schemes do not abolish discretion; they remove it from the judge’s hands and place it in the prosecutor’s office. Whoever sets the charge—the district attorney—determines the outcome of the case. In America’s adversarial criminal justice system, these laws stack the deck in favor of the prosecution. The primary reason the NYS Association of DAs aggressively opposes even the most modest proposals to amend the drug laws is that such measures would diminish their power. Requiring the consent of prosecutors to divert offenders distorts the American criminal justice system.

Myth: Drug law reformers assert a "largely mythical claim that our judges’ hands are tied by laws which fill our prisons with minor drug offenders.”

Fact: A recent Legal Action Center report revealed that in 2000, judges were unable to divert approximately 8,700 drug offenders to treatment who would have been eligible for diversion under Assemblymember Jeffrion Aubry’s (D-Queens) repeal bill (A-2823), and almost 5,000 drug offenders under the Assembly reform bill (A-8888; The Assembly reform bill does not allow diversion for offenders who have any history of violence). There are over 21,000 drug offenders incarcerated in NYS prisons today; in 2000, over 44% of all people sent to state prison were drug offenders—the vast majority of whom were minor drug offenders with no history of violence. It is incontrovertible that the drug laws have handcuffed judges, filled our prisons with minor drug offenders, and denied sufficient alternatives to offenders who need help.

Myth: If judicial discretion is restored, there will be greater sentencing disparities.

Fact: The possibility for sentencing disparities exists whether judges or DAs have discretion. However, while judges make decisions in public that are subject to review by higher courts, DAs make decisions behind closed doors with no chance for public or legal review. As Justice James Yates of the NY County Supreme Court stated: “Under current law, that determination [of what sentence is given to a particular defendant] is made by an assistant district attorney who is not bound by written public guidelines or standards, is not compelled to hear arguments in favor of reduction, is not required to explain or justify the decision, is not held accountable by the public or through judicial processes and the decision is not reviewable by any court . . . . [In contrast], in a system where a judge has authority to set sentences, there are proceedings on a record in public, with advocacy on both sides and a decision by a neutral party who must explain his or her decision and can be held accountable.”

Myth: Many more people of color are sent to prison for drug crimes than whites because they buy, sell and use drugs in greater numbers.

Fact: Although government studies show that the majority of drug users and sellers are white, 94% of drug offenders in state prisons are African-American and Latino. This stark racial discrepancy occurs because law enforcement concentrates on poor communities of color where most drug transactions take place on the street and minor dealers and users are more easily arrested. Police generally ignore middle and upper-class areas where the majority of people buy and use drugs behind closed doors. As Chicago Police Department Narcotics Division Chief stated in 1990, “There is as much cocaine in the Stock Exchange as there is in the black community. But those guys are harder to catch. Those deals are done in office buildings, in somebody’s home, and there is not the violence associated with it that there is in the black community. But the guy standing on the corner, he’s almost got a sign on his back. These guys are just arrestable.”

Myth: The drug laws are beneficial to communities throughout New York State.

Fact: While the drug laws do benefit upstate, rural, mainly white areas, they drain resources, funding and political power from poor NYC communities of color. The need for economic development in depressed upstate areas has been met by the construction and staffing of prisons. Since 1982, NY has opened 38 prisons, all in rural areas represented by Republican State Senators. 93% of NYS inmates are housed in prisons located in Republican Senate Districts. These prisons receive more than $1.1 billion annually to cover operating expenses and employ almost 30,000 people. Although the vast majority of prisons are located in mainly white, upstate areas, over 65% of the state prison population comes from a handful of poor NYC communities. The US Census Bureau records inmates as residents of the town where they are incarcerated, not where they are originally from, where their families still reside. NY has thus transferred thousands of people of color from its inner cities to upstate areas and, along with them, the government funding and electoral influence that are based on district population.

Myth: We can win the “war on drugs” if we just give it more money.

Fact: Even though the so-called war on drugs has been “fought” for decades and costs billions of dollars each year, illegal drugs are easily available, substance abuse remains one of the country’s most difficult problems, and prison recidivism rates for drug offenders hold steady. Ill-advised drug war policies like the Rockefeller Laws have done more harm than good: they ruin lives, tear apart families, divest political power and funding from poor communities of color, distort the criminal justice system, and skew government priorities toward prisons and away from education and alternatives to incarceration. These alternatives are far less expensive and more effective in reducing crime than prison. Former NYS Court of Appeals Chief Judge Charles Breitel stated that the Rockefeller Drug Laws’ “pragmatic value might well be questioned, since more than half a century of increasingly severe sanctions has failed to stem, if indeed it has not caused, a parallel crescendo of drug abuse.”

Myth: Children are protected by locking up drug users and sellers for long periods of time.

Fact: Incarcerating parents for long prison terms does not reduce the chance that their children will use or sell drugs. In fact, disruption of families by incarceration greatly increases the probability of children from such families getting into trouble with the law. The best way to raise the next generation of drug abusers is to put a generation of fathers and mothers in prison.

Conclusion

The Rockefeller Drug Laws have eliminated the historic and proper role of judges, as neutral arbiters, to balance appropriate factors in the process of achieving justice. They have also proven ineffective, wasteful, and racially biased. In the interest of justice, efficiency and public safety, policy makers should repeal the drug laws and restore judicial discretion.

Governor Pataki’s drug law reform proposal (S-4237) allows for judicial discretion in drug cases only to a very limited degree; the Assembly reform bill (A-8888) applies judicial discretion to a broader range of cases, but includes far too many exceptions. The REPEAL BILL (A-2823) introduced by Assemblymember Jeffrion Aubry (D-Queens), Chair of the Committee on Corrections, is the only proposal that would restore sentencing discretion to trial judges in all drug cases, enable full retroactive review of sentences for prisoners currently incarcerated under the laws, significantly expand alternatives to incarceration (including education, drug treatment and job training programs), and reduce sentence lengths for drug offenses. Passing the Aubry repeal bill (A-2823) is a critical first step in reversing a costly and ineffective prison expansion policy and the practices of racial injustice carried out by our government.

Drop the Rock c/o The Criminal Justice Alliance

135 E. 15th St, New York, NY 10003 Tel. (212) 254-5700 Fax (212) 473-2807

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