FOE TAKES NEW AIM AT ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS

Albany -- Opponent of harsh sentences fears reform faces rough
sledding in election year

Capitol bureau

A leading opponent of New York state's Rockefeller-era drug laws said
his organization is launching a renewed effort to persuade the
Legislature to change the nation's harshest sentencing statutes.

Robert Gangi, executive director of the Manhattan-based Correctional
Association of New York State, an organization that has been seeking
repeal of the Rockefeller laws for years, acknowledged that easing up
on drug laws may be a tough sell in an election year for the state
Legislature.

But in a meeting with the Times Union's editorial board, Gangi
expressed some optimism about overcoming the political complications
with a new campaign and a soon-to-be-released study the group says
links long mandatory prison terms for drug offenses to an increasingly
costly prison system based on political favoritism.

Gangi argued that New Yorkers generally favor reform, but added:
"Politicians in Albany are still treating it as some third-rail issue.
It's not.''

The laws, enacted in 1973 amid a growing drug problem and named for
then-Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, mandate minimum terms of 15 years to
life for sale or possession of relatively small amounts of narcotics.

Last year, Gov. George Pataki suggested some reforms that passed the
state Senate, including allowing a midlevel appeals court to review
mandatory sentences and reduce them by one-third for first-time
offenders. But it was tied to a bill to require all felony offenders
to serve at least six-sevenths of their prison terms, effectively
eliminating early release by the Parole Board.

The Assembly refused to consider the bill with the parole issue
attached, and there was open reluctance to discuss more sweeping
reforms a year before legislators faced re-election.

Gangi and others want to give trial judges sentencing discretion,
allowing them to consider alternatives like rehabilitation. Such
reforms were in a bill sponsored last year by Assemblyman Jeffrion
Aubry, D-Queens, chairman of the Corrections Committee. Aubry is
expected to reintroduce it this year.

To muster support, Gangi's group is distributing mock $1 bills with a
form on the back for people to sign and declare their desire for
reform. The organization also hopes more religious groups follow the
lead of the state's Roman Catholic bishops, who last June publicly
urged reform.

The group also is finalizing a study of state prisons, which hold
about 71,000 convicts -- including 22,000 drug offenders. The study,
Gangi said, found that most of the 71 prisons are in Republican Senate
districts and that more than one-third are in the districts of three
influential GOP senators -- Michael Nozzolio of Buffalo, who heads the
Crime Victims, Crime and Corrections Committee; Ronald Stafford of
Plattsburgh, chairman of the Finance Committee; and Dale Volker of
Erie, head of the Codes Committee. Nozzolio's district has six
prisons, Stafford's has 12 and Volker's has 8.

While the bulk of the prison system expansion occurred under
Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo and some upstate Republican communities
begged for prisons and their jobs, Gangi's group hopes to paint the
distribution of prisons as "a pernicious, pork-barrel process'' and a
costly one. Drug offenders, he said, cost about $715 million a year to
house.