NEW JERSEY LEADS NATION IN DRUG-INCARCERATION RATE

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- New Jersey leads the nation in the proportion of
prison inmates jailed for nonviolent drug offenses, as a result of
punitive, inflexible laws that are burdensome to taxpayers and ineffective
in curbing drug abuse, a drug policy reform group says.

The Washington-based Drug Policy Alliance reported Thursday that 36 percent
of New Jersey's 28,000 prison inmates are serving sentences for drug
crimes, compared with the national average of 20 percent. The group quoted
figures from the New Jersey state Department of Corrections as of June 2002.

"I think it's a combination of having tough and inflexible laws," said
Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the alliance, which advocates drug
treatment programs, rather than prison, for nonviolent offenders.

Nadelmann said New Jersey's drug sentencing laws were last amended in 1986.

One factor cited was New Jersey's law requiring that convicts serve 85
percent of their sentences, regardless of the nature of their crime or
their behavior behind bars.

Nonetheless, researchers said even they were surprised that New Jersey's
rate was highest.

"I think it's pretty safe to say that New Jersey's not on the prison reform
radar screen," said Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the Justice
Policy Institute, also based in Washington, and an author of the report.
"When you think of what systems are draconian, you think of New York and
its Rockefeller drug laws, California's three-strikes-and-you're-out, Texas
you think of everything."

New York, where last week Gov. George Pataki proposed easing the state's
drug laws, was sixth, at 27 percent, the study found. Louisiana and
Mississippi were second and third, each at 32 percent. California and Texas
were not even in the top 10, and Nadelmann praised Texas for recently
releasing 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders.

The lowest rate was Vermont, at 1 percent.

Release of the report Thursday morning was timed to correspond with the
start of a three-day session in East Rutherford, "Reason, Compassion,
Justice: The Drug Policy Alliance Biennial Conference."

Among other criticisms, the report said the state's drug incarceration laws
had a disproportionate impact on women and minorities.

For example, the incarceration rate is growing faster for women than men in
New Jersey, where drug charges make up a larger percentage of all charges
against women than against men.

The report found that Hispanics and blacks made up 81 percent of New Jersey
state's inmate population, though combined the groups make up just 27
percent of the general population.

The alliance estimates that the state's drug-related inmate population
costs $266 million a year, more than what a third of all states spend on
their entire prison populations.

And while the report said drug treatment programs have been expanding in
New Jersey prisons _ to 1,359 beds in 2002, up 329 beds from 1998 _
drug-related prison admissions have outpaced the growth in treatment
programs, with 7,300 admissions in 1999 alone.

The report's authors were guardedly optimistic about the prospects for
reform in New Jersey.

One proponent of reform is Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown, who has
been an outspoken opponent of jailing nonviolent drug offenders.

"I endorse the notion of discretion to the judiciary," Brown said
Wednesday. "I think it would be a good exercise to review our laws
governing drug sentencing and incarceration."

Ellen Melody, a spokeswoman for Gov. James E. McGreevey, who appointed
Brown, said the governor and commissioner would confer over the report's
findings.

A review of drug sentencing laws would take place under a bill to create a
sentencing commission sponsored by Assemblyman Peter Barnes, a Democrat who
chairs the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee. That bill was approved
by the committee in December, but stalled in the Assembly and lacks a
companion bill in the state Senate.

Barnes, a retired FBI agent and former police director for Edison and East
Brunswick, said he supports nonincarceration for nonviolent drug offenders.

"The tendency is to realize it's costing millions and millions of dollars
to incarcerate people whose treatment maybe should be outside prison walls
in another setting," Barnes said. "The problem is, quite frankly, no
legislator wants to be considered soft on crime."