DOUBTS SPREAD ABOUT DRUG-FREE SCHOOL ZONE LAWS

NEW YORK - In reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, laws creating
drug-free zones around schools spread nationwide. Now, hard questions are
being raised by legislators, activists, even law enforcement
officials about the fairness and effectiveness of those laws.

In New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington state, bills have been proposed
to sharply reduce the size of the zones. A former assistant attorney
general in Massachusetts reviewed hundreds of drug-free-zone cases, and
found that less than 1 percent involved drug sales to youths.

Citing such developments, the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute is
issuing a report Thursday that contends such laws, which generally carry
extra-stiff mandatory penalties, have done little to safeguard young people
and are enforced disproportionately on blacks and Hispanics.

"For two decades, policymakers have mistakenly assumed that these statutes
shield children from drug activity," said report co-author Judith Greene, a
New York-based researcher. "We found no evidence that drug-free zone laws
protect children, but ample evidence that the laws hurt communities of
color and contribute to mounting correctional costs."

New Jersey's sentencing review commission reached similar conclusions in
December, when the panel made up of state officials and criminal justice
experts found that students were involved in only 2 percent of the cases
it examined. It said drug-free zones around schools, parks and housing
projects cover virtually all of some cities, and 96 percent of offenders
jailed for zone violations were black or Hispanic.

Instead of declining, drug arrests in the zones have risen steadily since
the law took effect in 1987, the commission found.

A billed based on the panel's recommendation has been introduced that would
reduce the zones to 200 feet from the present size of 1,000 feet around
schools and 500 feet around parks and public housing. Drug dealers in the
smaller zones would face five to 10 years in prison, compared to three to
five years under current law but judges would have more discretion in
sentencing.

"When the overlap of zones in densely populated areas covers the entire
city, the idea of special protection loses its meaning people don't know
they're in a school zone," said Ben Barlyn, a deputy attorney general and
executive director of the sentencing review panel. "It would be as it we
made the entire New Jersey Turnpike a reduced speed zone."

Barlyn said New Jersey prosecutors and police chiefs had no objection to
shrinking the zones.

In Washington, state Sen. Adam Kline has proposed reducing drug-free school
zones from 1,000 to 200 feet and limiting the law's application to regular
school hours. In Connecticut, a hearing is scheduled Friday on a bill that
would reduce school zones from 1,500 feet to 200 feet.

At recent meetings, activists with Connecticut's A Better Way
Foundation which supports the bill have displayed maps of major cities
showing huge sections designated as drug-free zones. A map of New Haven
indicated that Yale University's golf course was the only large part of the
city not encompassed in one of the overlapping zones.

Most states have drug-free zone laws; they often entail mandatory prison
terms that preclude such options as probation or treatment.

Lolita Buckner Inniss, a Cleveland State University law professor, is a
vocal critic of the laws. Her research found that drug dealers in inner
cities and compact rural towns were disproportionately likely to incur the
extra penalties, in contrast to dealers in suburbs where zones covered
relatively small portions of the communities. That urban-suburban split has
the effect of making minorities more likely to bear the brunt of tougher
sentencing rules, she says.

"I've been dissatisfied by how the public mutely accepts these laws," she said.

Though intended to deter drug sales to youths, the laws have been applied
mostly to adult-to-adult transactions, according to the Justice Policy
Institute, a private research group advocating alternatives to prison.

It cited a study by William Brownsberger, a former Massachusetts assistant
attorney general who reviewed 443 drug cases in three cities. He found that
80 percent of the cases occurred in drug-free school zones, but only 1
percent involved sales to minors.