DRUG LAW DELAYS

A New Study Shows Wide Differences In Proposals, But That's No Cause For
Inaction

While it is unlikely that Gov. George Pataki and state legislative leaders
will risk going without a state budget agreement this year, it is more than
likely that they will go without Rockefeller Drug Laws reform. Just as they
did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. But it's
past time to act.

This year, there was added reason to hope for an agreement because Assembly
Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, had joined with Governor Pataki and
Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, R-Brunswick, on the need to
overhaul the 1973 statutes, which mandate long prison terms even for
first-time, low-level offenders. Previously, Mr. Silver had backed away
from reform out of fear that he and his fellow Assembly Democrats would be
tagged as soft on crime.

But agreeing on reform in concept is one thing, agreeing on the details
quite another. A new study released Monday by the Legal Action Center of
New York City shows just how far apart the parties are. The Assembly
proposal would give judges wider latitude in sentencing drug offenders to
treatment rather than prison. The governor's plan stresses
treatment for nonviolent offenders but would retain stiff prison
terms for violent drug criminals. It also calls for an end to parole for
all offenses -- a provision that many supporters of drug law reform oppose.

The study compared what the effect of the two proposals would be on the
8,000 drug offenders who were sentenced to prison last year in New York. Of
that number, 4,872 would have been eligible for treatment under the
Assembly plan, according to the study, compared with only 343 under the
governor's plan. But the governor's office said the study failed to account
for the 40 percent of offenders who decline treatment each year, and the
number that might have taken advantage of the governor's proposal to offer
offenders a chance to attend treatment programs run by prosecutors.

The ideal reform would be to scrap the Draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws
altogether and replace them with more enlightened sentencing guidelines --
a position long advocated by Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens. But if
that is politically out of reach for now, then the Assembly approach offers
a good compromise. Yet the state's district attorneys, who use the
Rockefeller Drug Laws to wrest plea bargains, are in no mood to give up
that club.

That makes for an impasse. But it is also an opportunity for Mr. Pataki and
lawmakers to show some courage and forge a reform bill that gives judges,
not prosecutors, the discretion they need to make punishment fit the crime.