FREEING PRISONERS

The Governor's Plan to Reduce Costs is Also a Reason For Drug Law Reform

It was one thing, apparently, for Governor Pataki to try to stop parole of
prison inmates late in his first term and early in his second. That was
before large surpluses in the state budget vanished and were replaced by
even bigger deficits. Mr. Pataki's budget proposal for the next fiscal year
makes it clear that he's giving those policies a second thought.

The governor wants to spend $33 million less on the state's prisons. That
would mean 350 fewer prison guards, and almost 500 fewer Department of
Correctional Services jobs overall, as well as 1,700 fewer inmates. About
1,300 of them would be leaving prison by virtue of reductions in their
sentences. Parole, as it's called in government talk.

Mr. Pataki says the inmates to be released would be those who take part in
rehabilitation programs while in prison and have no history of violence. In
short, they would be people whom the penal authorities have determined are
ready to live lawfully in the world outside of New York's 70 prisons.

It's an enlightened policy, certainly, as humane as it is economical. The
only critical thing that can be said of it, in fact, is that it doesn't go
far enough.

Many of the inmates who would benefit were sentenced to prison under New
York's Rockefeller-era drug laws. Instead of serving mandatory prison terms
of 15 years to life, they would be released after 10 years. Once on parole,
they would be subject to those restrictions for two years, rather than three.

But what about the thousands of other prisoners of the old drug laws? The
solutions sought by a much more austerity-minded governor amount to an
argument to overhaul the Rockefeller approach to drug crimes entirely. That
is, more rehabilitation and less incarceration.

Mr. Pataki has a record of advocating drug law reform without ever
delivering upon it. It's not unlike a tendency, before the current budget
crisis, to talk like a fiscal conservative but spend like a liberal -- all
with the Legislature's support, of course. Both the governor and the
Legislature should embrace this opportunity to enact sensible criminal
justice policies and reap the monetary savings that will come with them.