The Prison Explosion, Part 1a

DRUG OFFENDERS SWELL RANKS IN STATE PRISONS

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.

''I'm so tired of it," said Reed, a drug user with a long history in and
out of jail.

Both of them black, poor and in prison, Stevens and Reed represent the
outcome of a drug war that began in 1973 with the adoption of the
Rockefeller drug laws, named for then-Gov. Nelson D. Rockefeller. Rather
than ending the drug trade by snagging drug ''kingpins," the laws have
instead imprisoned thousands of low-level offenders, fostered a fivefold
increase in the prison population and have been enforced, almost
exclusively, among minority groups.

There is evidence that the racial imbalance is particularly stark locally:
85 percent of those serving drug sentences from Dutchess County are black,
the highest of the state's 62 counties, the Poughkeepsie Journal found in a
computer study of the prison population. In a county in which blacks are
about 8 percent of the populace, 469 blacks and 80 whites were sent to
prison for drug crimes in the last decade, state figures show.

Law-enforcement officials say the numbers are an outgrowth of
Poughkeepsie's place along a major commuter railroad, which brings both
drugs and drug sellers from New York City. The drug trade, they say, occurs
most blatantly on the streets of low-income, predominantly black
communities. Catching white offenders in the suburbs is trickier.

But with numbers piling up, many are starting to question the Rockefeller
legacy. Why?

- Fewer than 900 people were sent to state prison for drug offenses in
1980, when New York had 33 prisons. Last year -- when the number of prisons
reached 71 -- 8,500 were imprisoned.

- While prison rolls have jumped fivefold since 1973, the ranks of women
have swelled almost ninefold. Half are in for drug offenses; three-quarters
have children.

- Only 5 percent of the state's 22,000 sentenced drug offenders are white.
Blacks and Hispanics combined account for 93 percent of people serving drug
sentences, a reality that reform advocates say has frayed minority
communities and made prison an all-too common, and in some cases, expected
experience.

"It's been extremely destructive,'' said Alice Green, executive director of
the Center for Law and Justice, which advocates for drug law and sentencing
reform.

"It's the moral shame of our time," said Robert Gangi, executive director
of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison oversight group.

Crime is a crime, some argue

But those who uphold the laws question the alternative.

"Do you tolerate drug violence or say there's too many black men in jail?"
said Jere Tierney, coordinator of the inter-agency Dutchess County Drug
Task Force. "Until they change the laws, we can't be so concerned about the
sensibilities of criminal groups."

After 27 years, a cadre of influential groups and individuals has come to
believe the price paid for the drug war is too great and the benefit reaped
too small. Among those advocating reform are the New York State Catholic
Conference, the League of Women Voters, Human Rights Watch, a half-dozen
prison watch groups and some of the original legislators who voted for the
law, including former state Senators Warren Anderson and John Dunne, both
Republicans.

"The whole thrust of Gov. Rockefeller's proposing these changes was that it
would remove the dealers from the street and the sanctions would be so
severe it would deter people from engaging in drug trafficking,'' Dunne
said. "Neither one of those goals has been achieved. All it has done is
fill our prisons with an awful lot of people who don't belong there."

Perhaps the most ardent defender of the New York strategy is the state
District Attorneys Association, which issued a report last May in response
to growing questions about the Rockefeller legacy.

"We are a safer New York because of the significant law enforcement tool
provided to police and prosecutors by our drug laws," wrote Jeanine Pirro,
association president and Westchester County district attorney. Harsh
sentences prompt offenders to seek treatment and testify against higher-ups
in drug trade, she maintained.

Long, mandatory sentences

The law provides for mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life for
the sale of two ounces or possession of 4 ounces of a controlled substance
-- the same minimum as murder. Possession of two ounces or sale of a
half-ounce merits a minimum three-year term -- although many offenders can
be diverted to treatment or boot camp-like programs for shorter periods.
For a single $10 sale of cocaine, the minimum term is one to three years,
though many plead to lesser offenses.

Additionally, judges are mandated under a separate law to give prison time
for any second felony conviction, a provision that lands many drug
offenders in prison, often for low-level felonies. As with drug offenses,
Dutchess ranked highest among the state's 108 counties in the proportion of
second-felony offenders -- 78 percent -- who were black, the Journal found.

"African-American males look forward to going to jail, many of them," said
Wesley Lee, director of Save At-Risk for Corporate America, a Poughkeepsie
self-help organization. "Their older cousins, their fathers, their
brothers, they've been in jail. For the most part -- I hate hearing myself
say that -- they expect to end up in jail."

One in three black men from ages 20 to 29 nationally is under some form of
criminal sanction, from probation to prison, according to The Sentencing
Project, a reform group in Washington. In part because of drug laws, it
said, the U.S. now has the highest reported incarceration rate in the
world, 690 per 100,000 people, ahead of No. 2 Russia.

''What are the drug laws doing to the minority community?'' said Theodore
Arrington, a Poughkeepsie Middle School social worker. ''It's devastating us."

Arrington said half or more of the children in a typical class would raise
their hands if asked if they had a close relative in prison.

"It would be higher if not for the white kids in the class," he said.

Three Dutchess judges said cases were judged not on race but on law. And
all agreed strong sentences were needed to coerce offenders into drug
treatment, curb drug-related violence and control trafficking -- themes
repeated by prosecutors and police.

"These first-time offenders are not going to prison for the sale of drugs,"
said County Court Judge Thomas Dolan, noting charges are routinely reduced
and offenders sent to treatment. "Seventy-five to 80 percent of what I do
here (involves) people who failed those programs. God forbid I didn't have
the sanctions."

"The person's race has nothing to do with what happens in a courtroom,''
said Dutchess County Court Judge Gerald Hayes. "The real question is why
are such large numbers of people involved in drugs? It has to do with what
is going on outside the courts."

Some say laws too harsh

To reform advocates, however, the approach is all wrong. Treating the drug
problem as a crime problem has only driven up the price of drugs, spawned
violence and made criminals of people who have drug addictions, they
contend. The vast majority of prison-sentenced drug offenders -- 80 percent
in 1997 -- have had no violent felony convictions, according to a study
last year by Human Rights Watch; 60 percent were convicted of low-level
drug felonies.

"I am not an advocate of drug use; I am an advocate of decriminalizing the
drug laws," said Harold Ramsey, regional director of the Mid-Hudson NAACP
and a defense attorney. "The impact they are having on the lives of people
is ridiculous."

"I think it is the most unjust law enacted in my time," said retired New
York City Supreme Court Judge Jerome Marks, who has worked to free several
people jailed under the Rockefeller statute and has applied for clemency
for Stevens.

Even Gov. George Pataki at one point advocated reforming the laws but has
since introduced only a modest revision of the harshest sentence.

"Rockefeller Drug Laws have filled New York's prisons and have not
increased public safety,'' the governor said in 1995. Since 1981, the state
has spent $4.5 billion to build prisons, which cost more than $2.2 billion
a year to run.

Nonetheless, Pataki is painfully aware of the prison imbalance and already
has reduced the population of nonviolent offenders in several ways,
according to Katherine Lapp, his director of criminal justice services.

These include diverting sentenced drug offenders to the 90-day Willard drug
treatment program in Seneca County in lieu of much longer prison terms and
initiation of a merit release program, under which nonviolent offenders can
shave time off their sentences by participation in prison programs.

"New York's prison growth is not only half that of the nation since 1990,
it's stabilizing, and we expect, based on arrest trends, that it would
start to decline," she said.

Anthony Papa, 46, of the Bronx, had never even been arrested when, in 1986,
he tried to earn $500 by selling 4.5 ounces of cocaine. It got him a term
of 15 years to life, of which he served 12 years before being granted
clemency by Pataki.

"I should've gone to prison,'' he said. "But not for 15 years."

While he was in prison, his wife divorced him and he lost touch with his
young daughter, a frequent consequence, reform advocates say, of incarceration.

Sha-King Saunders, in the 13th year of a 15-to-life term for selling drugs,
is fighting a battle to stay connected with his teenage children, who don't
like to visit him in the cramped visitors room at Otisville prison in
Orange County. His wife, Sha-Asia Saunders of Brooklyn, said phone bills
sometimes run $1,000 a month as Saunders attempts to stay involved in
family issues. "He is definitely their father,'' she said. "They haven't
lost respect for him."

Researchers at John Jay College of Justice, in Manhattan, studied families
like the Saunders in communities with high rates of incarceration. With the
loss of financial and other support from incarcerated loved ones, families
suffered and crime in the community rose.

"In multiple ways, there's sort of an attack on family units," said one of
the study's authors, Dina Rose, a John Jay criminologist. Loss of income
and expenses associated with visiting and calling family members in
far-flung prisons adds to depression and stress, she said.

Just as police acknowledge the drug trade flourishes in the face of the
laws, the laws' opponents acknowledge many of those incarcerated under them
do, in fact, belong in prison. The question is who and for how long.

Encouraging drug treatment

A commission set up by state Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye divided offenders
into two groups: traffickers who sell drugs to profit and addicts "whose
drug and drug-related crimes are motivated by their addiction." The latter
group, it said, clogs courts and would be better served by more aggressive
treatment of their addictions. "We know in large measure that incarceration
of nonviolent addicts is a failure,'' said Chief Administrative Judge
Jonathan Lippman, who maintained that 10,000 nonviolent drug addicts could
be diverted from jails and prisons to treatment yearly.

Dutchess Supreme Court Judge George Marlow, who served as a County Court
judge for seven years, agreed that a certain number could be diverted -- if
longer, more intensive treatment programs were available.

"I believe we ought to spend more money on semi-secure treatment for
nonviolent drug offenders than we presently are," he said. "I would predict
that we would then be sending less people to prison."

At the same time, Marlow said, the threat of a prison sentence was one of
the strongest motivators for drug-addicted offenders to seek and stay in
treatment.

The Kaye commission agreed. Consequently, its recommendations on the law
itself were limited: It said appellate courts should be able to roll back
15-year sentences like Stevens' that it determined were not "in the
interest of justice."

But it split on whether to change other provisions of the laws, instead
recommending widespread access to drug programs that could potentially keep
people out of prison by breaking the cycle of addiction.

That cycle has put Willie Reed of Poughkeepsie back in prison three times
for parole violations related to "dirty urine" -- by which illegal drugs
were detected.

It has kept Dean Perry, 30, of Kingston in prison for three of the past
five years on burglary charges related to cocaine addiction. Until his
release last month, his only treatment was Alcoholics Anonymous meetings,
said his wife, Melissa, who cares for their 7-year-old daughter.

"They should be helped,'' she said.

And it put Oscar Walker, 45, back in prison five times under separate
sentences. On his fifth stay, he was placed in a prison drug treatment
program that began his turnaround, and, after release, he went to a
residential program that completed it.

"The addiction is stronger than most people can ever, ever, ever
comprehend,'' he said. "I just felt these straps coming off."

Walker cost the system more than $1 million in court, legal and
incarceration costs in his 32-year bout with heroin addiction, according to
a tally by the residential aftercare program he attended, the Altamont
Program Inc. in Albany. The drug program, meantime, cost $11,390 for eight
months, less than half the cost of a year in prison.

Several studies have found treatment is cost-effective. One by the RAND
Corp., a nonprofit think tank, found treatment reduced drug-related crime
at 15 times the rate of incarceration. Every dollar spent on treatment
reduces consumption of drugs at a rate eight times higher than a dollar
spent on prisons, it found.

Calls for judicial discretion

Proposals are pending in the state Assembly and Senate to repeal the
mandatory provisions of the drug and second felony laws in favor of giving
judges discretion at sentencing.

Pataki's proposal would institute only minor changes. He favors letting
appellate courts review the harshest 15-year sentences. And drug offenders
would serve somewhat less time under a Pataki proposal to do away with
parole for nonviolent offenses, as he has for violent ones.

In the meantime, Terrence Stevens serves what he calls his "death
sentence," waiting to hear on an appeal and possible clemency. His
sentencing judge, who regretted having to give such a stiff sentence, has
written in support of clemency for Stevens.

Said retired Erie County Judge John V. Rogowski, "There seems to be a need
to correct the situation."