Press Release: State Legislature Passes Historic Drug Law Reforms

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 2, 2009 CONTACT: Jennifer Carnig, 845.553.0349 / 212.607.3363 / [email protected] State Legislature Passes Historic Drug Law Reforms April 2, 2009 -- The New York Civil Liberties Union today applauded the State Legislature for passing historic reforms to New York State’s notoriously harsh and ineffective mandatory minimum drug sentencing scheme. “These reforms are a major step toward ending a disastrous policy that has ruined lives, torn apart families and caused enormous racial inequities,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “Substance abuse is both a public health and a law enforcement issue and today, after 36 long years, New York will finally start treating it that way.” Enacted in 1973, the Rockefeller Drug Laws mandated extremely harsh prison terms for the possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs. Though the laws are intended to target drug kingpins, most sentenced under them are convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses. Most of the nearly 12,000 New Yorkers serving time for drug offenses have substance abuse problems; many others turned to drugs because of problems related to homelessness, mental illness or unemployment. For decades, the NYCLU, criminal justice advocates and medical experts have sought to untie the hands of judges and allow substance abuse to be treated as a public health matter. As noted in the New York State Sentencing Commission’s recent report, sentencing non-violent drug offenders to prison is ineffective and counterproductive, and has resulted in unconscionable racial disparities: Blacks and Hispanics comprise more than 90 percent of those currently incarcerated for drug felonies, though most people using illegal drugs are white. “Governor Paterson deserves an enormous amount of credit for his leadership in making good on his promise to New Yorkers to make drug law reform a priority,” Lieberman said. “He was a leader on this issue in the state senate and stayed true to his beliefs when he became governor and succeeded in working effectively with the assembly and the senate to make reform a reality.” The Rockefeller bill embraces two fundamental principles of reform: It eliminates mandatory minimum sentences, and significantly restores judges’ ability to order treatment and rehabilitation instead of incarceration. “These reforms do not eliminate irrationality and injustice from the drug sentencing laws, but it shifts New York’s failed drug policy away from mass incarceration and toward a public health model,” said Robert Perry, NYCLU legislative director. “This is a historic occasion.” Once Governor Paterson signs the bill into law, it will: • Restore the authority of a judge to send individuals charged with drug offenses into substance abuse treatment rather than prison; • Expand in-prison treatment and re-entry services so that people who want and need help can access it; and • Allow for approximately 1,500 people serving excessive sentences for low-level nonviolent drug offenses to apply for resentencing. While these reforms represent a historic step forward in overhauling the drug laws, significant remnants of the Rockefeller Drug Law scheme remain in place. The NYCLU noted, for example, that the bill: • Permits unreasonably harsh maximum sentences for low-level, non-violent drug offenses; • Disqualifies from eligibility for treatment and rehabilitation individuals who may be most in need of such programs; and • Retains a weight-based sentencing scheme that will mandate a long prison sentence for people who should be eligible for treatment. “The bill restores an important measure of common sense and rationality to our drug laws,” Lieberman said. “But there is more work to be done in the future to restore fundamental justice and fairness to our criminal justice system.” - xxx -