Nearly 40 years after tough new drug laws led to an explosive growth in prison rolls, New York State has dramatically reversed course, chalking up a 62 percent drop in people serving time for drug crimes today compared with 2000, according to a Poughkeepsie Journal analysis. The steep decline -- driven, experts said, by shifting attitudes toward drug offenders and lower crime -- means that nearly 17,000 fewer minorities serve state time today than in 2000, groups that were hardest hit by the so-called war on drugs. Overall, the prison population declined 22 percent. [continues 1547 words]
In 1996, Gov. George Pataki commuted the lengthy prison sentences of seven people, six of whom, he noted on their behalf, had dutifully earned college degrees in prison. The irony is that, a year earlier, Pataki had eliminated the college program from the New York state budget. Today, except for a few privately funded programs, inmates cannot take free college courses, despite studies showing they cut the return rate to prison by half. The loss of college prison programs -- which cost the equivalent of less than 1 percent of the prison budget -- is just one outgrowth of the tough-on-crime mentality in current vogue. While New York's 71 prisons are in many ways better than many nationwide, the emphasis, say prison reform advocates, has shifted ever more toward punishment and away from rehabilitation. [continues 2324 words]
Bobby Lane has a job, a wife, a house in the country -- and a life that was unimaginable not so long ago, when he was serving time for murder in a state prison. "I consider myself no longer a prisoner of despair," says Lane, 45, of Wallkill in Orange County. "I'm a prisoner of hope." Paroled in 1997, Lane works as a substance abuse counselor for the Volunteers of America in the Bronx. He credits his success -- New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently pointed to him as an inspiration for others -- to a prison program that allowed him to earn a college degree. [continues 838 words]
Dutchess Stressing Rehabilitation Effort It costs about $80 a day to keep a drug offender in a New York state prison. It costs about $65 a day to keep a drug offender in the Intensive Treatment Alternative Program run jointly by the Dutchess County mental health and probation departments. The savings grow when someone is successfully rehabilitated and doesn't continue to use drugs and commit crimes. ''Breaking the cycle of addiction and despair. Those are the savings you don't see,'' said Dutchess County Commissioner of Mental Hygiene Kenneth M. Glatt. [continues 1032 words]
Intensive Treatment Alternative Program Get sent to the Dutchess County Jail and you'll be screened for substance abuse. One of the treatment programs that can be recommended is the Intensive Treatment Alternative Program operated jointly by the Dutchess County Department of Probation and Community Corrections and the Dutchess County Department of Mental Hygiene. Participants -- usually first-time felons or repeat misdemeanor offenders -- have to agree to enter the program. Participation is often in lieu of incarceration, but some offenders may have to serve some jail time, as well, in order to meet the legal guidelines. [continues 928 words]
Prison Cells Remain Filled In the last five years, New York state opened three prisons, built nine prison additions and saw its inmate population grow by 5,000. It did all this in the midst of a dramatic decline in crime that reduced the number of people sentenced to state prisons by at least 10,000 in the last three years alone. How can prison populations go up even when the supply of sentenced criminals dwindles? [continues 2357 words]
In 1988, New York state spent twice as much on higher education as it did on prisons -- a difference of more than $1 billion. Last year, it spent $100 million more on prisons than on higher education. The tally: prisons up $780 million; colleges down $580 million. Critics of the state's prison buildup fear that a new "prison industrial complex" -- employing 32,500 statewide, operating 71 facilities and spending $2.2 billion annually -- has become an integral part of the state's economy. [continues 909 words]
Alternative To Prison Advanced From the time he was 8 or 9, growing up in Brooklyn, Sha-Kim Fitzgerald was in trouble. He worked his way up from shoplifter to drug user to drug addict to drug seller. Last March he was arrested on Main Street in the City of Poughkeepsie on drug-dealing charges -- for the second time. But this time, it turned his life around. After three months in an intensive drug treatment program at the former Willard Psychiatric Center in upstate Seneca County, Fitzgerald envisions a future that doesn't include drugs, prison or dependency. [continues 575 words]
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. [continues 2432 words]
It's happened to a pastor, a county legislator, a school superintendent, a social worker and a program director. All of them black, all of them male, they've been either followed in stores, stopped while driving, confronted while walking the street or all of the above. "What are you doing on this side of town this late at night?" is a common question Theodore Arrington, a Poughkeepsie school social worker says he and other African Americans are asked by police. [continues 1164 words]
Two key legislators on both sides of the political fence agree the time may be ripe for amending New York's drug laws. But that's all they agree on. On one side, Sen. Michael Nozzolio, chair of the Senate Corrections Committee, wants to increase drug treatment programs and allow appellate courts to roll back only the stiffest sentences. He calls assertions that drug laws have filled prisons with low-level drug offenders ''overinflated hype.'' [continues 333 words]
New York's drug statutes provide for mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life for the sale or two ounces or possession of four ounces of a controlled substance, such as cocaine of heroin. Possession of two ounces or sale of a half-ounce merits a minimum three-year term. For a single $10 sale of cocaine, the minimum term is one to three years. In both cases, prosecutors note that many offenders plead to lesser charges or are diverted to shorter drug treatment or shock incarceration programs. [continues 497 words]
