DRUG LAW REFORM, NOW

So here's New York, more than two months into a new gubernatorial
administration in which all was supposed to be quite suddenly
different. True, Governor Spitzer and the leaders of the Legislature
can point to lots of progress in prevailing upon what long had been
government by paralysis. But where is the commitment to reform the
Rockefeller era drug laws, on the books for coming up on 34 years
now? Mr. Spitzer was just beginning his campaign for governor, in
December of 2004, when the collective injustice and futility of those
laws were last addressed. It was a modest step that ended life
imprisonment for the most serious drug offenses but ignored the
plight of all those doing time for less severe drug crimes.

There were 5,657 people sent to prison in New York for nonviolent
drug offenses in 2004. That number was up to 5,835 the following year
and 6,039 in 2006, according to a review by the Correctional
Association of New York. More than half of the drug offenders in
state prison have been serving sentences based on convictions for
lower-level offenses -- that is, Class C, D and E -- felonies, which
involve small amounts of drugs. About 40 percent of those inmates are
in prison for simple possession of drugs, not selling them.

Many, if not most, of the drug felons serving sentences for selling
drugs have substance abuse problems that need to be treated,
according to the Correctional Association. Several studies by the
national Institute on Drug Abuse have found that those who take part
in drug treatment programs becomes less inclined to engage in
criminal behavior as a result.

All of those inmates would be eligible for rehabilitation rather
incarceration if the Rockefeller laws were repealed outright, an
admittedly unlikely scenario. About 60 percent of the 6,000 people
sentenced to prison last year would be eligible for different and
more effective treatment, though, if a reform plan favored by the
state Assembly were enacted, according to an analysis by the
Correctional Association.

The Assembly, of course, has never been the obstacle to more
reasonable drug laws. For New York to truly be different would
require the new governor to be far more committed than his
predecessor was, and for the Senate to embrace the reforms that it
has resisted in the past.

Mr. Spitzer and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno ought to take
note, then, of the potential benefits of further drug law reform.
Assuming, as the Correctional Association does, that judges would
sentence about 3,600 drug offenders a year to alternative punishment
and treatment, the savings would be substantial. The Correctional
Association estimates a savings of about $60,000 a year per offender
- -- $50,000 in reduced costs to the criminal justice system and
$10,000 in reduced health care and welfare costs, less crime and more
tax contributions.

It costs more than $36,000 a year, remember, to keep an inmate in the
state prison system. Treatment is much less expensive -- between
$2,700 and $4,500 a year for out-patient treatment, according to the
Correctional Association, and $17,000 to $21,000 a year for
residential treatment.

There's more to be done, and a strong incentive to do so.

THE ISSUE: More people are in prison in New York for drug crimes now
than when the state last addressed the laws of the Rockefeller era.

THE STAKES: The alternatives to incarceration are less expensive and
more effective.