SEIZE THE CHANCE

The State Legislature Can Salvage A Lackluster Year By Finally Reforming
The Rockefeller Drug Laws

State government has few, if any, accomplishments to cite for this most
unusual year in New York. The annual budget farce, for example, went on
into September, leaving the governor and the Legislature with unfinished
business that soon enough became part of an outright fiscal crisis.

It would be tempting, then, to hope that the Legislature stays adjourned
until January. It could return with the renewed seriousness of mission that
state leaders profess to have developed since Sept. 11. Only lawmakers will
be back in Albany late next month to finish the year's business. If they
want 2001 to be remembered for something constructive after all, they could
reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

This was supposed to be the year, in case anyone cares to recall. Gov.
George Pataki said back in January that the time had come to revoke these
excessively harsh and unquestionably failed polices. The leaders of both
the Assembly and the Senate, Democratic as well as Republican and liberal
as well as conservative, agree.

Those laws, passed out of a sense of desperation almost 30 years ago, have
left New York's prisons full of nonviolent, low- and middle-level drug
offenders serving lengthy and sometimes interminable sentences, and barely
put a dent on the criminal drug dealing they were intended to stop.

So many people have recognized the truth, including some of those actually
involved in their initial passage, that the Rockefeller Drug Laws are still
supported by only one constituency to speak of. They're the state's
prosecutors.

And the New York State District Attorneys Association is lobbying hard to
stop drug law reform. The arguments are as familiar as they are tired. The
district attorneys suggest, among other things, that these laws are what
has curtailed violent crime in New York. They claim that changing the laws
would remove the incentive to get drug offenders into treatment.

But others know better, particularly Mr. Pataki, who said in his State of
the State speech that "those laws are out of step with both the times and
the complexities of drug addiction."

What's missing is the essential role of judges. The Rockefeller laws all
but eliminate discretion on the part of the arm of government that's
supposed to apply the law. It should be up to judges, not prosecutors, to
decide who can go into treatment rather than to prison. The more specific
nature of a drug offender's prison term should be up to judges as well.

The governor needs to speak out yet again. And he needs to resolve the
differences between his plan for drug law reform and a bolder and
further-reaching plan advocated by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-
Manhattan.

It's the governor and the Legislature who should be making the laws, not
the prosecutors. They should be content with enforcing them, and in this
case, enforcing a more humane and effective version of the law.