The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

You have a difficult task ahead of you—bringing consistency and clarity to NY State’s sentencing structure. This effort could not come at a more important time. It was Ms. O’Donnell who described the current system as Byzantine. And as the preliminary report clearly indicates, the need for consistency, clarity, and evidence-based practices in the penal law is plainly obvious and extremely urgent.

In reading over the preliminary report, it is clear that this body has the capacity, know-how, and the Executive mandate to make substantive recommendations for effective reform in this state. It is precisely for this reason that my organization, Drug Policy Alliance, and dozens of allied organizations in the large coalition Real Reform New York, were utterly shocked and dismayed by the Commission’s lack of meaningful reform recommendations regarding the Rockefeller Drug Laws. In fact, it was much worse than a lack of reform recommendations—in the report, the Commission, against all common sense and science, raises questions about whether or not further reform is even necessary, concluding that “more study is needed.”

This was shocking unto itself. But what I found even more alarming was that I could not find the word “race” or “racism” even once in the entire report. Now, on page 27, the term “disparity” appears, in reference to disparities in mental health and drug treatment services in urban and rural communities. Yes, this is as good a place as any to start addressing the disparities in our state that impact sentencing issues in one way or another. But to stop there stuns the conscience, given what is transpiring under the Rockefeller Drug Laws. It’s nearly unbelievable.

Almost everyone locked up under the state’s Rockefeller Drug Laws are people of color—91% of nearly 14,000 people, despite the fact that whites and people of color use and sell illegal drugs at roughly equal rates. Some studies show that whites use and sell drugs at higher rates than people of color –and certainly, whites are the majority in the state of New York. Isn’t this a disparity that warrants the Commission’s urgent attention? Yet it’s not even mentioned in the preliminary report. Why? How can the Commission possibly ignore this crisis?

The report correctly identifies DOCS as the largest treatment provider in the State of New York. Yet there is no questioning of whether or not this even makes sense. Why would the prison system be the largest treatment provider in New York? It doesn’t make fiscal sense given that community based treatment is much more cost effective. Treatment in prison is not supported by science, since studies show, and existing programs prove, that alternatives to incarceration and community based drug treatment programs do more to restore people, are more lasting, and are more effective at reducing recidivism and promoting public safety. By not even mentioning this issue of racial disparities under the Rockefeller Drug Laws, the Commission is tacitly saying that treatment for drug offenses for people of color can take place only when those people are locked in a cage. Can this be happening in 2007? It’s an outrage.

With regard to real reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws—the studies have been done. The research is in. The editorials have been written. The stories of injustice have been told. The terms are widely understood. The polling has been done. And the politics are clear. The overwhelming consensus is that Real Reform is absolutely necessary: restoring judicial discretion, reducing sentences, expanding community based drug treatment programs and alternatives to incarceration, and retroactively bringing fairness to those currently serving inhumane Rockefeller sentences.

So why doesn’t the Commission address these disparities? Why didn’t the Commission make recommendations for Rockefeller Drug Law reform? It’s beyond me. I was not part of the deliberations and can only surmise three possible reasons. One, perhaps the Commission is callous, and the set of policies known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws-- which by any honest account are the last vestiges of Jim Crow left on the lawbooks today—are simply not enough to move this body to action. I don’t think this is the case. I know some of the Committee members as people of conscience, as are, I’m sure, the rest of you serving on this Committee.

A second reason could be that the Commission has prioritized politics over sound research, at the expense of your mandate and the research at hand. This is more likely the case, and if it is, the first point could be true or not and it wouldn’t matter.

A third potential reason to ignore Rockefeller Drug Law reform could be that the Commission has decided that, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the prosecutors who testified before you about how “useful” and “critically important” the Rockefeller Drug Laws have been are actually correct. To believe this, the Commission would have to suspend its own judgment, ignore the existing research and science on these issues, ignore successful evidence-based programs and practices from around the country, and buy wholesale into what is, at its base, a political claim of the worst order. That is, a specious claim made by prosecutors for one purpose alone—to maintain discretionary power in drug cases at the expense of justice. I pray that this is not the reason that the Commission punted with regard to the Rockefeller Drug Laws, because it’s not better than any of the other possible scenarios I’ve laid out here, and in fact may be worse.

Right now, as I sit before you, many of our allies are holding a press conference outside to express frustration with the lack of RDL reform recommendations, and to demand meaningful reforms. Prominent religious leaders, treatment experts, people formerly incarcerated under the Rockefeller Drug Laws, family members of those incarcerated under the laws, experts in alternatives to incarceration and dozens of community members are outside with reporters in the cold rain, because of one thing: the need for real reform is clear, and the time for real reform is now. For the vast majority of New Yorkers, the time for debate is over. It is now time for action—and that action must meet basic standards of justice, fairness, scientific rigor, and human rights. We need real reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Thank you for your time.