KEEP NONPROFITS IN REHAB PLANS

State corrections officials are looking in the wrong place if they want to
trim the high cost of running New York's prisons.

They're talking about getting rid of effective programs that help turn drug
felons into productive citizens. They -- and the Legislature -- should
instead be pushing for reform of the state's onerous Rockefeller-era drug laws.

Under those unnecessarily harsh drug sentencing laws, the number of
prisoners has doubled and more than doubled again since 1975. But the total
prison population has been slowly dropping in the last couple years,
largely because many nonviolent prisoners were redirected into
"alternatives to incarceration" programs. Drug rehabilitation and mental
health services, provided to prisoners by nonprofit organizations, are
central to this success.

But now state corrections officials want to stop contracting with these
nonprofits and redeploy prison staff to offer the programs instead.
Obviously, this is really about protecting state jobs and pleasing powerful
unions. But Correctional Services Commissioner Glenn Goord bills this as as
a cost-cutting measure, saying it will save taxpayers more than $2 million
annually. Since the number of state inmates is dropping, the space and
staff is available right at the prisons, said Correctional Services
spokesman James Flateau. The facilities are already paid for, he added, so
the only cost to the taxpayer is for staff time.

No potential cost savings can be taken lightly, considering the fact New
York's finances have been staggering through a national recession,
aggravated by recovery costs from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But is it
worth uprooting these working rehabilitation programs to save $2 million --
one-thousandth of one percent of the $2.2 billion corrections budget?

Especially when such programs have proven their worth -- in both
effectiveness and taxpayer savings? A study by the Rand Corp., a nonprofit
think tank, determined 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. Current rehab programs proven effective

The nonprofits providing these services in New York have gained great
respect among the criminal justice community while prison drug programs
have not. So why should the state reassign state workers, just so they can
stay on the payroll, when it's more effective to contract these services out?

Gov. George Pataki wants to see $20 million cut from the corrections
budget. The way to reach this goal, and then some, is to enact sweeping
reform to the Rockefeller drug laws. Harshest in the nation, they mandate
the same sentence given to murderers -- 15 years to life in prison -- to
anyone convicted of possessing or selling minuscule amounts of illegal drugs.

State Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman has estimated 10,000 of
them -- all nonviolent drug felons -- could be annually diverted from jails
and prisons to treatment. If they were, it would save taxpayers $150
million a year -- 75 times what Commissioner Goord is proposing.

With these Rockefeller drug laws still on the books, the lives of thousands
of nonviolent criminals are wasting away in New York prisons -- and
taxpayers are wasting millions to keep them there. Getting rid of good
programs with the proven ability to rehabilitate these lives doesn't make
sense. Getting rid of the Draconian drug laws that put them in prison does.