A MOVE TOWARD RATIONAL DRUG LAWS

New Jersey has a stupid and cruel drug law that has racially
discriminatory side effects. A bill that would moderate its
provisions is pending in the state Senate and appears to have a good
chance of passage this fall.

If that happens, it will be a good thing. With some effective
leadership in the Senate and from Gov. Jon Corzine, it will happen.

The law is the Comprehensive Drug Reform Act, which sets mandatory
minimum sentences for drug crimes. Since it took effect in 1986, even
more severe mandatory penalties have been enacted. The result has
been a high toll in wasted dollars and ruined lives.

One year after the act was passed, only 11 percent of the prison
population was locked up for nonviolent drug-law offenses. Today,
that figure is 32 percent.

New Jersey has the highest proportion of nonviolent drug-law
offenders as a percentage of its overall prison population in the
nation (36 percent) and the highest proportion of new admissions to
prison for nonviolent drug-law offenses (48 percent).

While the number of prisoners in New Jersey went up from 7,990 in
1982 to 28,622 in 2001, the percentage of individuals serving
mandatory minimum sentences rose from 11 percent to 61 percent.

New Jersey spends $331 million a year to incarcerate nonviolent
drug-law offenders, which is more than 16 other states spend on their
entire corrections systems.

It's a foolish way for a financially strapped government to expend
its money. But the hidden costs are even greater.

While in jail, the prisoners obviously forgo any opportunity to earn
an honest income. Once they are free, they face severely limited job
options; ex-cons earn 30 percent to 40 percent less than those who
have never been in prison.

Collectively, that represents a lot of lost taxes for the state, a
lot of lost child-support payments and a lot of lost trade for local
businesses.

Mandatory minimum sentences, by design, tie the hands of judges --
the men and women whose job ought to be to weigh the facts of each
case, tailor punishments to fit crimes and dispense justice.

Fair and effective law enforcement relies on judicial discretion.
When a legislature enacts mandatory sentences, it blindly proclaims
that circumstances don't matter, that one punishment fits all.

A major contributor to overloaded prisons has been a provision that
adds three years, with no exceptions and no parole, to the sentence
of anyone convicted of committing a drug crime within 1,000 feet of a
school or school bus and 500 feet of parks, libraries, museums and
other public facilities.

Because the forbidden zones cover most of the state's urban areas but
occupy much less of the suburbs, the vast majority of those caught by
the law are black or Hispanic.

No one argues that the courts shouldn't throw the book at drug
dealers who actually peddle to children. But the approach taken by
the school-zone law not only has had a devastatingly disproportionate
impact on the minority population, it hasn't protected kids.

A commission of law-enforcement officials, judges, lawmakers, public
defenders, prosecutors and other experts found in 2005 that there had
been no increase in drug-distribution offenses immediately outside
the 1,000-foot perimeter, as would be expected if the law was working.

Instead, arrests within the zone rose steadily over the years. Of the
school-zone cases the commission studied, none involved selling drugs
to minors. Drug sales tend to take place at nights and on weekends,
when kids aren't in school.

Among the hapless fish caught in the net was one Jessie Chambers, who
was sentenced to six years in prison for a cocaine offense because he
was arrested within 500 feet of New Brunswick's Fire Museum.

The museum is open only by appointment and the bust took place after
midnight, when it would be highly unlikely that Chambers was trying
to sell to youngsters. But the law required the judge to add three
years to the sentence.

Last June 23, the Assembly approved A-2762, sponsored by Assembly
Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-Ewing, and backed by Corzine
and Attorney General Anne Milgram. The bill would allow judges to
waive or reduce parole ineligibility or grant probation in
school-zone cases, depending on such factors as the suspect's record
and whether school was in session and kids were present.

If the accused person was arrested on school property or possessed a
firearm, the mandatory three-year minimum sentence still would apply.

A-2762 represents an important step toward a rational drug policy.
Nevertheless, 27 Assembly members, all Republicans, voted against it,
while two Democrats, Linda Greenstein of Plainsboro and Walter
DeAngelo of Hamilton Township, abstained, which had the effect of a "no" vote.

Three Republicans, to their credit, voted for the bill, including one
of the Assembly's most conservative members, Michael Patrick Carroll,
R-Morristown.

Its supporters believe the Senate will follow suit this fall. The
Senate's bill, S-1866, sponsored by Sens. Ray Lesniak, D-Union, and
Sandra B. Cunningham, D-Jersey City, currently resides in the
Judiciary Committee.

The person who will determine whether it comes to a Senate vote is
Senate President Dick Codey, D-West Orange, who opposes proposals to
shrink the size of the school zones but has said he supports the
compromise measure.

"For me, this is for first-time offenders, where no violence is
involved," he told The Star-Ledger in May.

"Optimism is in the air," Watson Coleman told me. Let's hope the
optimism is justified.