May 24, 2000
Drug Laws That Destroy Lives
ew York State's inflexibly draconian drug
laws, enacted under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in
1973, have helped propel the state prison population
to a fivefold increase between then and 1999. Some
22,300 drug offenders are currently confined in state
prisons. Many of these inmates are nonviolent users
or small-time sellers who were dispensing drugs to
support their own addictions. The annual budget
cost of this incarceration is a staggering $700 million. But the human costs are even more horrendous. Excessive prison sentences destroy families
for no good reason and prevent nonviolent offenders
from leading productive lives.
Thousands of inmates are in prison who could
be effectively rehabilitated with drug treatment.
Thousands of children whose parents have been
sentenced to inappropriately long terms have spent
their childhoods in the costly, often callous foster
care system. It is time Gov. George Pataki and the
State Legislature put an end to decades of waste by
repealing these laws.
It is not enough that, nearly every holiday
season, Governor Pataki shows mercy to a few
prisoners who have been caught by drug laws that
impose mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years
to life on offenders convicted of selling as little as
two ounces, or possessing as little as four ounces, of
cocaine or heroin. Last Christmas he commuted the
sentences of four inmates, all of whom were first-time, nonviolent drug offenders who had been sentenced to either 15 or 20 years to life.
But these isolated gestures of mercy cannot
begin to cure an inflexible and irrational system in
which nonviolent drug offenders are being sentenced to terms longer than those imposed on
rapists and other violent criminals. The solution is
to abolish these laws and give judges discretion at
sentencing to consider the circumstances of the
crime and the offender's background.
The unfairness of the Rockefeller laws can be
seen in the cases of Donna Charles and Leah Bundy,
two women who are serving time under these laws,
though good social policy would have allowed their
release years ago.
Ms. Charles had never been in trouble with the
law before her drug arrest. But desperate for money to rent an apartment after she and her children
found themselves essentially homeless, she agreed
to carry a package of cocaine to Memphis for a drug
dealer. She was arrested at La Guardia Airport. She
was offered a plea bargain of three years to life for
criminal possession, but chose to go to trial, and was
convicted and sentenced to 17 years to life in 1987.
She left behind two young children, who have spent
their childhoods farmed out to family friends and in
foster care. Even the judge who sentenced her
recently pleaded for clemency on her behalf.
Ms. Bundy was also convicted of criminal possession. She was in her boyfriend's apartment when
the police raided the unit and found drugs. She went
to trial and was sentenced to 15 years to life. She
was then 21 years old, and her children were 1, 2 and
3 years old. In the nine years that she has been in
prison, her children have been in foster care and
informal care arrangements. Her rehabilitation has
been so impressive that Joseph Bruno, the State
Senate majority leader, lobbied for clemency on her
behalf to Governor Pataki last year, but her clemency request has not been granted.
Thousands of other inmates are in the prison
system under another Rockefeller-era law that applies to second-time offenders. Those offenders face
a mandatory minimum sentence of four and a half
years for selling as little as $10 worth of cocaine.
Many are small-time dealers who sell drugs to
support their addictions, and most never go through
drug treatment. Yet these offenders are filling the
court dockets and prison cells when they could be
rehabilitated through treatment programs and other less costly alternatives to incarceration.
Governor Pataki and leaders like Mr. Bruno
should show some common sense by repealing these
outmoded laws and restoring rationality to drug
sentences. The fortunate few who have won clemency leave behind tens of thousands of others incarcerated by a system of unjust laws.
