Pubdate: Tue, 23 Mar 2004
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2004 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Al Baker
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?140 (Rockefeller Drug Laws)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/elaine+bartlett
Note: Elaine Bartlett author of " Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of
Elaine Bartlett" spent 16 years in prison for first offence.

EX-PRISONER TELLS HER STORY, HOPING TO CHANGE DRUG LAWS

ALBANY - Advocates and state lawmakers who have long been
trying to overhaul New York's mandatory sentences for drug crimes
invoked a time-honored tradition to push the issue in Albany last
year: celebrity.

The hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons met for seven hours behind
closed doors last June with Gov. George E. Pataki and the state's two
top legislative leaders, trying to reach an agreement for changing the
Rockefeller-era drug laws. There was a rally days before at City Hall,
featuring appearances by entertainers, including Carly Simon and the
hip-hop artist 50 Cent. Before long, the "Drop the Rock" campaign was
gaining steam, after spots of the same name on MTV.

But, in the familiar syndrome of Albany gridlock, nothing changed.

This year, with frustration mounting among legislators and thousands
of inmates still languishing in state prisons, another strategy for
change is being employed in the State Capitol by the prisoners'
relatives and advocates for the cause: putting a human face on the
issue.

To that end, Elaine Bartlett, 46, the subject of a new book, "Life on
the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett" (Farrar, Strauss
& Giroux), made the rounds in Albany on Monday to tell her story
about how she was arrested near Albany, in 1983, for selling four
ounces of cocaine, and sentenced, after a trial, to 20 years to life
for her first offense.

When the governor finally granted her clemency - and she was released
in January 2000 after 16 years behind bars - it was into a world
fractured by her time away. Her 22-year-old son, Jamel, was now
himself in prison on a drug conviction.

Ms. Bartlett, who lives in Washington Heights, in Manhattan, met with
Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican majority leader of the State Senate,
who had endorsed her clemency and promised to buy 100 copies of the
book, written by Jennifer Gonnerman, a staff writer for The Village
Voice, for his colleagues. Standing outside a Senate chamber with Mr.
Bruno, Ms. Gonnerman and others, Ms. Bartlett told reporters she would
push this year for a repeal of the laws, enacted in the 1970's.

"I plan to be as active as I can,'' said Ms. Bartlett, speaking of her
plans to lobby the leaders in Albany. "Also, I am hoping that this
book will touch them in a way that no media, or any other
organization, has been able to touch them because not only is it a
story that you hear about, but once they read this book it will seep
into them because they have families."

Everyone in Albany agrees the Rockefeller-era drug laws are too harsh.
The state's three major leaders - the governor, Mr. Bruno and Sheldon
Silver, the Democratic speaker of the State Assembly - say that
changing them is a priority. Yet, the three cannot come to agreement
on how to do so and the issue has been kept open.

As Ms. Bartlett headed to a reception for her book at the Corning
Tower in Albany, many in the State Capitol said they were not
optimistic a deal could be reached this year. Assemblyman Keith L. T.
Wright, a Democrat from Harlem, sat outside Mr. Silver's office and
shook his head, explaining that people's lives hung in the balance.

"It's nothing but political jockeying,'' he said of the gridlock over
the issue. "I don't think Kofi Annan could even solve it."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin