Pubdate: Wed, 21 Nov 2001
Source: Albany Times Union (NY)
Copyright: 2001 Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation
Contact:  http://www.timesunion.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/8
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?140 (Rockefeller Drug Laws)

SEIZE THE CHANCE

The State Legislature Can Salvage A Lackluster Year By Finally Reforming 
The Rockefeller Drug Laws

State government has few, if any, accomplishments to cite for this most 
unusual year in New York. The annual budget farce, for example, went on 
into September, leaving the governor and the Legislature with unfinished 
business that soon enough became part of an outright fiscal crisis.

It would be tempting, then, to hope that the Legislature stays adjourned 
until January. It could return with the renewed seriousness of mission that 
state leaders profess to have developed since Sept. 11. Only lawmakers will 
be back in Albany late next month to finish the year's business. If they 
want 2001 to be remembered for something constructive after all, they could 
reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

This was supposed to be the year, in case anyone cares to recall. Gov. 
George Pataki said back in January that the time had come to revoke these 
excessively harsh and unquestionably failed polices. The leaders of both 
the Assembly and the Senate, Democratic as well as Republican and liberal 
as well as conservative, agree.

Those laws, passed out of a sense of desperation almost 30 years ago, have 
left New York's prisons full of nonviolent, low- and middle-level drug 
offenders serving lengthy and sometimes interminable sentences, and barely 
put a dent on the criminal drug dealing they were intended to stop.

So many people have recognized the truth, including some of those actually 
involved in their initial passage, that the Rockefeller Drug Laws are still 
supported by only one constituency to speak of. They're the state's 
prosecutors.

And the New York State District Attorneys Association is lobbying hard to 
stop drug law reform. The arguments are as familiar as they are tired. The 
district attorneys suggest, among other things, that these laws are what 
has curtailed violent crime in New York. They claim that changing the laws 
would remove the incentive to get drug offenders into treatment.

But others know better, particularly Mr. Pataki, who said in his State of 
the State speech that "those laws are out of step with both the times and 
the complexities of drug addiction."

What's missing is the essential role of judges. The Rockefeller laws all 
but eliminate discretion on the part of the arm of government that's 
supposed to apply the law. It should be up to judges, not prosecutors, to 
decide who can go into treatment rather than to prison. The more specific 
nature of a drug offender's prison term should be up to judges as well.

The governor needs to speak out yet again. And he needs to resolve the 
differences between his plan for drug law reform and a bolder and 
further-reaching plan advocated by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D- 
Manhattan.

It's the governor and the Legislature who should be making the laws, not 
the prosecutors. They should be content with enforcing them, and in this 
case, enforcing a more humane and effective version of the law.
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