Pubdate: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 Source: Poughkeepsie Journal (NY) Copyright: 2001 Poughkeepsie Journal Contact: PO Box 1231 Poughkeepsie, NY 12602 Fax: (845) 437-4921 Feedback: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/news/forms/letter_form.htm Website: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/ Author: Mary Beth Pfeiffer, Poughkeepsie Journal Note: Part 1a of a 3 part series The Prison Explosion, Part 1a DRUG OFFENDERS SWELL RANKS IN STATE PRISONS Terrence Stevens is serving a sentence of 15 years to life at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville -- the same as 90 fellow inmates convicted of murder, manslaughter or rape. Stevens was convicted of having five ounces of cocaine. "It's too harsh, too excessive," said the 31-year-old inmate, who has muscular dystrophy and is confined to a wheelchair. His sentencing judge -- bound by law to give that term -- agreed. Of the 70,000 inmates in state prisons, about 640 serve lengthy drug sentences like Stevens. Thousands more serve terms like Willie Reed, 51, sentenced to 3 1/2 to 7 years for selling $20 worth of cocaine. ''I'm so tired of it," said Reed, a drug user with a long history in and out of jail. Both of them black, poor and in prison, Stevens and Reed represent the outcome of a drug war that began in 1973 with the adoption of the Rockefeller drug laws, named for then-Gov. Nelson D. Rockefeller. Rather than ending the drug trade by snagging drug ''kingpins," the laws have instead imprisoned thousands of low-level offenders, fostered a fivefold increase in the prison population and have been enforced, almost exclusively, among minority groups. There is evidence that the racial imbalance is particularly stark locally: 85 percent of those serving drug sentences from Dutchess County are black, the highest of the state's 62 counties, the Poughkeepsie Journal found in a computer study of the prison population. In a county in which blacks are about 8 percent of the populace, 469 blacks and 80 whites were sent to prison for drug crimes in the last decade, state figures show. Law-enforcement officials say the numbers are an outgrowth of Poughkeepsie's place along a major commuter railroad, which brings both drugs and drug sellers from New York City. The drug trade, they say, occurs most blatantly on the streets of low-income, predominantly black communities. Catching white offenders in the suburbs is trickier. But with numbers piling up, many are starting to question the Rockefeller legacy. Why? - Fewer than 900 people were sent to state prison for drug offenses in 1980, when New York had 33 prisons. Last year -- when the number of prisons reached 71 -- 8,500 were imprisoned. - While prison rolls have jumped fivefold since 1973, the ranks of women have swelled almost ninefold. Half are in for drug offenses; three-quarters have children. - Only 5 percent of the state's 22,000 sentenced drug offenders are white. Blacks and Hispanics combined account for 93 percent of people serving drug sentences, a reality that reform advocates say has frayed minority communities and made prison an all-too common, and in some cases, expected experience. "It's been extremely destructive,'' said Alice Green, executive director of the Center for Law and Justice, which advocates for drug law and sentencing reform. "It's the moral shame of our time," said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison oversight group. Crime is a crime, some argue But those who uphold the laws question the alternative. "Do you tolerate drug violence or say there's too many black men in jail?" said Jere Tierney, coordinator of the inter-agency Dutchess County Drug Task Force. "Until they change the laws, we can't be so concerned about the sensibilities of criminal groups." After 27 years, a cadre of influential groups and individuals has come to believe the price paid for the drug war is too great and the benefit reaped too small. Among those advocating reform are the New York State Catholic Conference, the League of Women Voters, Human Rights Watch, a half-dozen prison watch groups and some of the original legislators who voted for the law, including former state Senators Warren Anderson and John Dunne, both Republicans. "The whole thrust of Gov. Rockefeller's proposing these changes was that it would remove the dealers from the street and the sanctions would be so severe it would deter people from engaging in drug trafficking,'' Dunne said. "Neither one of those goals has been achieved. All it has done is fill our prisons with an awful lot of people who don't belong there." Perhaps the most ardent defender of the New York strategy is the state District Attorneys Association, which issued a report last May in response to growing questions about the Rockefeller legacy. "We are a safer New York because of the significant law enforcement tool provided to police and prosecutors by our drug laws," wrote Jeanine Pirro, association president and Westchester County district attorney. Harsh sentences prompt offenders to seek treatment and testify against higher-ups in drug trade, she maintained. Long, mandatory sentences The law provides for mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life for the sale of two ounces or possession of 4 ounces of a controlled substance -- the same minimum as murder. Possession of two ounces or sale of a half-ounce merits a minimum three-year term -- although many offenders can be diverted to treatment or boot camp-like programs for shorter periods. For a single $10 sale of cocaine, the minimum term is one to three years, though many plead to lesser offenses. Additionally, judges are mandated under a separate law to give prison time for any second felony conviction, a provision that lands many drug offenders in prison, often for low-level felonies. As with drug offenses, Dutchess ranked highest among the state's 108 counties in the proportion of second-felony offenders -- 78 percent -- who were black, the Journal found. "African-American males look forward to going to jail, many of them," said Wesley Lee, director of Save At-Risk for Corporate America, a Poughkeepsie self-help organization. "Their older cousins, their fathers, their brothers, they've been in jail. For the most part -- I hate hearing myself say that -- they expect to end up in jail." One in three black men from ages 20 to 29 nationally is under some form of criminal sanction, from probation to prison, according to The Sentencing Project, a reform group in Washington. In part because of drug laws, it said, the U.S. now has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world, 690 per 100,000 people, ahead of No. 2 Russia. ''What are the drug laws doing to the minority community?'' said Theodore Arrington, a Poughkeepsie Middle School social worker. ''It's devastating us." Arrington said half or more of the children in a typical class would raise their hands if asked if they had a close relative in prison. "It would be higher if not for the white kids in the class," he said. Three Dutchess judges said cases were judged not on race but on law. And all agreed strong sentences were needed to coerce offenders into drug treatment, curb drug-related violence and control trafficking -- themes repeated by prosecutors and police. "These first-time offenders are not going to prison for the sale of drugs," said County Court Judge Thomas Dolan, noting charges are routinely reduced and offenders sent to treatment. "Seventy-five to 80 percent of what I do here (involves) people who failed those programs. God forbid I didn't have the sanctions." "The person's race has nothing to do with what happens in a courtroom,'' said Dutchess County Court Judge Gerald Hayes. "The real question is why are such large numbers of people involved in drugs? It has to do with what is going on outside the courts." Some say laws too harsh To reform advocates, however, the approach is all wrong. Treating the drug problem as a crime problem has only driven up the price of drugs, spawned violence and made criminals of people who have drug addictions, they contend. The vast majority of prison-sentenced drug offenders -- 80 percent in 1997 -- have had no violent felony convictions, according to a study last year by Human Rights Watch; 60 percent were convicted of low-level drug felonies. "I am not an advocate of drug use; I am an advocate of decriminalizing the drug laws," said Harold Ramsey, regional director of the Mid-Hudson NAACP and a defense attorney. "The impact they are having on the lives of people is ridiculous." "I think it is the most unjust law enacted in my time," said retired New York City Supreme Court Judge Jerome Marks, who has worked to free several people jailed under the Rockefeller statute and has applied for clemency for Stevens. Even Gov. George Pataki at one point advocated reforming the laws but has since introduced only a modest revision of the harshest sentence. "Rockefeller Drug Laws have filled New York's prisons and have not increased public safety,'' the governor said in 1995. Since 1981, the state has spent $4.5 billion to build prisons, which cost more than $2.2 billion a year to run. Nonetheless, Pataki is painfully aware of the prison imbalance and already has reduced the population of nonviolent offenders in several ways, according to Katherine Lapp, his director of criminal justice services. These include diverting sentenced drug offenders to the 90-day Willard drug treatment program in Seneca County in lieu of much longer prison terms and initiation of a merit release program, under which nonviolent offenders can shave time off their sentences by participation in prison programs. "New York's prison growth is not only half that of the nation since 1990, it's stabilizing, and we expect, based on arrest trends, that it would start to decline," she said. Anthony Papa, 46, of the Bronx, had never even been arrested when, in 1986, he tried to earn $500 by selling 4.5 ounces of cocaine. It got him a term of 15 years to life, of which he served 12 years before being granted clemency by Pataki. "I should've gone to prison,'' he said. "But not for 15 years." While he was in prison, his wife divorced him and he lost touch with his young daughter, a frequent consequence, reform advocates say, of incarceration. Sha-King Saunders, in the 13th year of a 15-to-life term for selling drugs, is fighting a battle to stay connected with his teenage children, who don't like to visit him in the cramped visitors room at Otisville prison in Orange County. His wife, Sha-Asia Saunders of Brooklyn, said phone bills sometimes run $1,000 a month as Saunders attempts to stay involved in family issues. "He is definitely their father,'' she said. "They haven't lost respect for him." Researchers at John Jay College of Justice, in Manhattan, studied families like the Saunders in communities with high rates of incarceration. With the loss of financial and other support from incarcerated loved ones, families suffered and crime in the community rose. "In multiple ways, there's sort of an attack on family units," said one of the study's authors, Dina Rose, a John Jay criminologist. Loss of income and expenses associated with visiting and calling family members in far-flung prisons adds to depression and stress, she said. Just as police acknowledge the drug trade flourishes in the face of the laws, the laws' opponents acknowledge many of those incarcerated under them do, in fact, belong in prison. The question is who and for how long. Encouraging drug treatment A commission set up by state Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye divided offenders into two groups: traffickers who sell drugs to profit and addicts "whose drug and drug-related crimes are motivated by their addiction." The latter group, it said, clogs courts and would be better served by more aggressive treatment of their addictions. "We know in large measure that incarceration of nonviolent addicts is a failure,'' said Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, who maintained that 10,000 nonviolent drug addicts could be diverted from jails and prisons to treatment yearly. Dutchess Supreme Court Judge George Marlow, who served as a County Court judge for seven years, agreed that a certain number could be diverted -- if longer, more intensive treatment programs were available. "I believe we ought to spend more money on semi-secure treatment for nonviolent drug offenders than we presently are," he said. "I would predict that we would then be sending less people to prison." At the same time, Marlow said, the threat of a prison sentence was one of the strongest motivators for drug-addicted offenders to seek and stay in treatment. The Kaye commission agreed. Consequently, its recommendations on the law itself were limited: It said appellate courts should be able to roll back 15-year sentences like Stevens' that it determined were not "in the interest of justice." But it split on whether to change other provisions of the laws, instead recommending widespread access to drug programs that could potentially keep people out of prison by breaking the cycle of addiction. That cycle has put Willie Reed of Poughkeepsie back in prison three times for parole violations related to "dirty urine" -- by which illegal drugs were detected. It has kept Dean Perry, 30, of Kingston in prison for three of the past five years on burglary charges related to cocaine addiction. Until his release last month, his only treatment was Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, said his wife, Melissa, who cares for their 7-year-old daughter. "They should be helped,'' she said. And it put Oscar Walker, 45, back in prison five times under separate sentences. On his fifth stay, he was placed in a prison drug treatment program that began his turnaround, and, after release, he went to a residential program that completed it. "The addiction is stronger than most people can ever, ever, ever comprehend,'' he said. "I just felt these straps coming off." Walker cost the system more than $1 million in court, legal and incarceration costs in his 32-year bout with heroin addiction, according to a tally by the residential aftercare program he attended, the Altamont Program Inc. in Albany. The drug program, meantime, cost $11,390 for eight months, less than half the cost of a year in prison. Several studies have found treatment is cost-effective. One by the RAND Corp., a nonprofit think tank, found treatment reduced drug-related crime at 15 times the rate of incarceration. Every dollar spent on treatment reduces consumption of drugs at a rate eight times higher than a dollar spent on prisons, it found. Calls for judicial discretion Proposals are pending in the state Assembly and Senate to repeal the mandatory provisions of the drug and second felony laws in favor of giving judges discretion at sentencing. Pataki's proposal would institute only minor changes. He favors letting appellate courts review the harshest 15-year sentences. And drug offenders would serve somewhat less time under a Pataki proposal to do away with parole for nonviolent offenses, as he has for violent ones. In the meantime, Terrence Stevens serves what he calls his "death sentence," waiting to hear on an appeal and possible clemency. His sentencing judge, who regretted having to give such a stiff sentence, has written in support of clemency for Stevens. Said retired Erie County Judge John V. Rogowski, "There seems to be a need to correct the situation."