Pubdate: Tue, 18 Jun 2002
Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Copyright: 2002 Associated Press
Author: Joel Stashenko, Associated Press Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?140 (Rockefeller Drug Laws)

DRUG LAW REFORM NOT DEAD, BUT NOT QUITE ALIVE

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Proponents of easing state mandatory sentencing laws for 
drug offenders accused prosecutors Tuesday of halting momentum toward 
reform by raising eleventh-hour objections.

"This is a tactic they have used every year to thwart any meaningful 
changes in the law," said Deborah Small of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Another proponent of softening the statute, former state Sen. John Dunne, 
said the complaints of the state's district attorneys about a drug reform 
plan from the state Assembly was "inflammatory and self-serving."

Aides said the Legislature and Gov. George Pataki's office were still 
talking about changing the drug laws to soften the harshest penalty and 
create more opportunities for treatment for nonviolent offenders. They said 
the issue was not dead.

But Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said "I really don't detect an interest 
in the ... Senate in doing anything meaningful."

Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said the negotiations on the issue had 
"slowed to a crawl."

The drug law bill favored by majority Democrats in the Assembly was 
approved by that chamber late Monday by a 79-62 margin _ or with only three 
votes to spare.

That narrow margin calls into question the Assembly's ability to pass a 
compromise plan with the Senate and Pataki, if one can be reached, 
according to Bruno spokesman John McArdle.

Advocates for changing the laws said a 13-page analysis released by 
prosecutors Friday of competing reform plans put forward by Pataki and the 
majority Democrats in the Assembly had thrown cold water on the negotiations.

In it, the prosecutors assailed the Assembly plan as being too lenient to 
drug offenders and of potential danger to the public because some violent 
offenders would allegedly be diverted to treatment instead of prison. The 
prosecutors also said they must retain a significant voice in the decision 
of which offenders go to prison and which are sent to treatment.

Another proponent of drug law reform, Jonathan Gradess of the state 
Defenders Association, called the timing and nature of the prosecutors' 
complaints a "thermal nuclear strike" intended to kill reform in 2002.

Small said prosecutors have used their substantial power for nearly 30 
years to fill state prisons with black and Hispanic drug offenders as a 
consequence.

"I believe they have abrogated their right to continue to say" who gets 
prison and who gets treatment, Small said.

Meanwhile Tuesday, the New York City-based Human Rights Watch said its 
study of the drug laws called the children of those incarcerated under them 
the "collateral casualties of the state's war on drugs."

It said 23,537 children have parents in New York prisons convicted of drug 
laws and since 1980, 124,496 children have had at least one parent 
incarcerated in New York prisons on drug convictions.

Also Tuesday, the Republican candidate for attorney general, former Judge 
Dora Irizarry, tried to make drug law reform an issue in her campaign 
against incumbent Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

"Considering the enormous crime-fighting impact of this reform, it strikes 
me as odd that our chief crime-fighter would go into hibernation on this 
issue," Irizarry said.

Spitzer has been a "strong proponent of Rockefeller drug law reform and he 
has worked with all sides to try to build a consensus for the appropriate 
legislation," his spokesman Darren Dopp said Tuesday.
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