JUST SAY YES

With a push from Pataki, this should be the year lawmakers reform
draconian drug laws.

Gov. George Pataki has stepped up to the plate, signaling via a
comprehensive reform proposal that he may finally be ready to scrap
the state's Rockefeller-era drug laws.

If he stays the course, the support of the law-and-order governor
could provide the cover that timid legislators need to end the
state's harsh mandatory prison terms for nonviolent drug offenders.
The goal should be to allow judges discretion to decide sentences
case by case, with drug treatment as one meaningful alternative to
jail time.

Mandatory prison terms are a decades-old, knee-jerk reaction to a
once-burgeoning drug epidemic. The result has been explosive growth
in the state's prisons, driven by huge numbers of nonviolent
offenders, consigned to costly cells only to return to addiction and
crime when released. The policy has cost too much and returned too
little in crime control.

With his latest proposal, Pataki joins a long list of would-be
reformers, which includes state court officials, Assembly Democrats,
advocacy groups, much of the public and even some of the lawmakers
who initially enacted the Rockefeller laws.

Pataki would shorten mandatory sentences for the most serious drug
offenses and allow appeals courts to shave them even more in some
cases. He would eliminate mandatory prison time for low-level,
nonviolent felony drug offenders and allow treatment as one
alternative. He would allow even greater sentencing leeway in some
circumstances, with the consent of prosecutors. At the same time,
Pataki would impose more prison time on repeat violent offenders,
Internet drug dealers, offenders with guns and those who involve
minors in drug use.

The discretion Pataki would return to trial judges should be
broadened, but the plan provides a solid point of departure for the
reform debate. Although money saved on prisons and tapped from
federal sources will be available, state officials must ensure there
are enough adequately funded treatment programs.

With the crime rate low and the number of drug offenders behind bars
now declining in New York, there is a window of opportunity for
common-sense sentencing reform. It is an opportunity that shouldn't
be squandered.