THE DAs ARE WRONG

Their Pleas To Retain The State's Harsh Drug Laws Do Not Stand Up
Under Scrutiny

With the prospect of Rockefeller drug law reform more promising than
ever, the state's district attorneys are pleading with Gov. Pataki to
retain the status quo. But the governor should resist that plea. So
should Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, and Assembly
Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan. The prosecutors simply have not
made a sound case for retaining these outdated and ineffective
statues.

That is nowhere more apparent than in the letter sent to Mr. Pataki
by Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney, who is also
president of the New York State District Attorneys Association, which
represents all 62 county prosecutors in New York. "Violent crime is
down dramatically in New York state,'' writes Mr. Carney, "and, in
our view, one of the main reasons for the decline is the vigorous
enforcement of our drug laws.''

But the decline in crime is part of a national pattern, and experts
have attributed it to a variety of factors, including an aging
population and lower unemployment. As for the impact of the
Rockefeller drug laws, they have been on the books for nearly three
decades. To hail them as effective now is to ignore their
ineffectiveness for so long. They were designed to end drug crime by
putting away kingpins for long prison terms. But no one would argue
that the drug war is even close to being won in New York.

To the contrary, the statistics show the Rockefeller statues to be
dismal failures. New York's prison population in 1973, when the drug
laws were enacted, was 13,000. Today, it is 70,000, and some 21,000
- -- or more than the entire prison population 28 years ago -- are
serving time for drug offenses, often for lower-level offenses while
the kingpins remain free. Meanwhile, other states have turned to
alternative sentencing for drug offenses and are showing promising
results in reducing crime and recidivism.

The prosecutors like the Rockefeller laws because they give them
leverage to force plea bargains from suspects, and to decide who
should be remanded to treatment centers. But those decisions should
be made in the courtroom, not a prosecutor's office. And judges
should have more discretion in meting out sentences.

The Rockefeller drug laws should not be used as a club to extract
guilty pleas. Their only purpose should be to prescribe punishment
that fits the crime. As of now, they do not. But that can change if
state lawmakers and Gov. Pataki enact reforms that are long overdue.