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Testimony of ReconsiDer to the New York City Council’s Committees on Fire & Criminal Justice Services, and Civil Rights
October 22, 2002
New York City Hall
Joint meeting. Committee(s) on Civil Rights; Fire & Criminal Justice Services Time: 10:00 A.M. Location: Committee Room - City Hall Chairperson(s): Yvette Clarke, Hiram Monserrate Proposed Res. 241-A - By Council Members Monserrate, Clarke, Baez, Barron, Brewer, Comrie, DeBlasio, Foster, Gioia, Jennings, Martinez, Quinn, Reed, Reyna, Rivera, Sanders, Jr., Seabrook, Serrano, Stewart, Vann and Weprin –
RESOLUTION - calling upon the New York State Legislature to adopt meaningful reform of the Rockefeller drug laws ______ ReconsiDer is a grassroots not-for-profit membership organization that was incorporated in New York State by concerned citizens to provide a forum for discussing alternatives to one of America’s greatest public policy failures—the war on drugs. Our tax-exempt mission is to educate the public about drugs and drug policies, including the problems caused by using criminal sanctions to regulate the distribution of drugs and alternatives to the use of criminal sanctions as regulatory policy instruments that are being employed by other democratic nations around the globe. To that end, during the past year, in addition to participating in dozens of radio and television talk shows, we spoke face-to-face with well over 10,000 New York State residents at forums organized by Rotary Clubs, local chapters of The League of Women Voters, religious groups, Lions Clubs, and other civic-minded organizations from Albany to Buffalo and from Montauk to the Canadian Border.
While membership in ReconsiDer is open to all citizens concerned about drugs and problems related to their use and distribution, many of our members are professionals who have seen first-hand both the harms caused by drugs and the harms caused by our prohibitionist drug policies. Included among our members are police officers, addiction psychiatrists, judges, probation officers, legislators, teachers, and social workers. Also included among our members are professors, policy analysts, criminologists, public health researchers, social scientists, and other scholars who have focused their research agendas on drug policies and related issues, including urban revitalization and youth development. Most of our members, whether they have a professional interest in drug policy or not, are parents who are eager to see their children develop into healthy, happy adults capable of making a positive contribution to society.
Before this hearing is over you will have heard testimony about the injustice some have suffered due to New York State’s harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, about the massive growth of the state prison population during the past two decades, about the racially disproportionate impact of our current drug policies, and about the cost-effectiveness of treatment relative to incarceration. While we believe changing sentencing guidelines so that discretion is returned to judges could be a positive move, mandated treatment is an unsatisfactory solution. Some people benefit from drug treatment, others abuse drugs but don’t respond to treatment, and the largest group uses drugs without any significant side effects and should live their lives without the intrusion of the law. Treatment would be beneficial for some people, but we are not convinced that such reforms by themselves offer a credible solution to the drug problem.
Mandatory sentencing guidelines, such as those in the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws were first instituted to ensure equality under the law. They were designed to force judges to sentence wealthy, white, and well connected citizens convicted of a crime to the same sentence imposed on poor ethnic minorities isolated in ghettos who were convicted of that same crime. Mandatory sentencing guidelines, however, have not resulted in sentencing parity. Mandatory sentencing guidelines failed because they did not eliminate discretion from the process; they simply shifted discretion from judges to prosecutors. We believe restoring judicial discretion would be cost-effective and just. However, we do not believe the racially disproportionate effects of the war on drugs would be meaningfully altered by restoring judicial discretion or reducing mandatory minimum sentences. Given that 94% of those serving time for drug crimes in NYS are Black or Hispanic, some reduction in the proportion of Blacks and Latinos incarcerated for drug crimes would be inevitable if judicial discretion was returned, but sizable racial disparities in incarceration would undoubtedly persist.
As for treatment, offering treatment as an alternative to incarceration may be beneficial for those who need it, but the simple truth of the matter is that most drug users do not need treatment. As the vast majority of alcohol consumers are not alcoholics, so the vast majority of illegal drug users are not abusers. Most drug users are gainfully employed citizens who do not have a drug problem and are unlikely ever to develop a drug problem. Like anyone else, should they commit an act which harms (or greatly increases the likelihood of harming) another, we have laws, such as those against assault, robbery, and DWI, already in place to deal with them.
1989 was a watershed year, more people were sent to prison for drug offenses than for violent crimes. This perverse result has continued. During this same period, only one in five burglaries was reported and only one in 20 reported burglaries ended in arrest. Yet detectives continue to be reassigned from burglary details to investigations of street sales of drugs. In addition to the neglect of the victims of these crimes the financial cost falls heavily on us because this miss-guided policy is reflected in significantly higher insurance premiums.
New York has a vaunted public university system that was expanded by Governor Rockefeller however the continued well being of this system is undermined by the Rockefeller drug laws. General-fund spending on prisons grew by $1.4 billion while general fund expenditures for college dropped by $850 million, between 1985 and 2000. According to a recent report by the Justice Policy Institute this change in state priorities was by no means equally distributed, with black men and the poor bearing most of the burden. Between 1980 and 2000, about three times as many African-American men were added to the prison system as were added to the nation's colleges and universities. By 1999-2000, there were nearly a third more African-American men in prison and jail (791,600) than were enrolled in higher education (603,000 ).
“Yes, these things are a shame” you say, “ but if they decrease the availability of drugs perhaps it’s just something we have to accept.” But looking at data supplied by the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy, we learn that the price of heroin has dropped, not increased. The illegal market price of cocaine in 1981 was $275.12 per gram and by 1996 it had dropped to $94.52. Because a kilogram of raw opium sells for $90 in Pakistan, but is worth $290,000 in the United States, law enforcement seizures have little, if any, impact on operations or profitability.
Our current drug laws have no deterrent effect on drug dealers because the profits are too great and the risk of apprehension too slight. Similarly, our current laws do not deter drug addicts because drugs are an integral part of their lives and the possibility of imprisonment is irrelevant. As for their deterrent effect on potential future drug users, our prohibitionist drug policies appear to be counterproductive. Most youths report that it is easier to obtain illegal drugs than it is to obtain alcohol because the market for alcohol is regulated and the black market for drugs is not.
Greater law enforcement efforts would by futile. To imprison 100,000 drug users and sellers in New York State would cost over ten billion dollars for prison construction alone and another three billion dollars for annual operating expenses. For a forty-billion dollar ten year expenditure, the number of drug users and sellers on the streets would be reduced by about 10%, and drug business-related violence would not be reduced at all.
More costly
than money, however, is the price we now pay for this failed policy in terms of
the decline in public safety, the breakdown of our criminal justice system, the
erosion of our civil liberties and the pervasive public disrespect of the law.
In 1936, shortly after the repeal of alcohol prohibition, August Vollmer wrote the book, The Police and Modern Society for the University of California Press. Vollmer had been police chief of Los Angeles, and was a professor of management at the University of California. He is often referred to as the father of professional police administration. Vollmer declared in 1936:
"Stringent laws,
spectacular police drives, vigorous prosecution, and imprisonment of addicts and
peddlers have proved not only useless and enormously expensive as means of
correcting this evil, but they are also unjustifiably and unbelievably cruel in
their application to the unfortunate drug victims. Repression has driven this
vice underground and produced the narcotic smugglers and supply agents, who have
grown wealthy out of this evil practice and who by devious methods have
stimulated traffic in drugs. Finally, and not the least of the evils associated
with repression, the helpless addict has been forced to resort to crime in order
to get money for the drug which is absolutely indispensable for his comfortable
existence."
Approximately 100 years before Vollmer, the father of modern policing and the creator of the first “modern police force”, Sir Robert Peel, wrote his “Nine Principles of Policing” The last of these, and possibly the most significant as we look at today’s police and district attorneys boasting of their ever-increasing arrest and conviction rates, reads as follows :
“To recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.”
The time has come to develop policies that reduce the harm caused by drugs and the violence fueled by the enormous profits made possible by selling drugs in the black market. According to the United Nations the illicit drug trade accounts for one-sixth of the world’s total economic activity. Even if 95% of the cocaine destined for New York consumers was confiscated by law enforcement agencies, the 17,000% profit margin in the cocaine trade would ensure that cocaine dealers would still realize a profit. Profits from the drug trade finance violent gangs, whose operations continue to expand throughout New York State. In Albany’s Arbor Hill, Schenectady’s Hamilton Hill, Syracuse’s South Side, and many smaller, rural communities that lack sufficient resources to combat gangs, drug business related violence has escalated in recent years and will continue to escalate unless the profits made possible by drug dealing are substantially reduced.
With all the attention being paid to the victims of the violence that inevitably surrounds the illegal drug business, society tends to forget the other victims of the so-called War on Drugs — those people and businesses who can't get into court to have their cases heard; the victims of traditional crimes such as burglary, rape and robbery who can't get justice because the police are occupied with drug cases; property owners who can’t sell their property for a profit because of crime in the neighborhood; merchants going bankrupt because the police no longer have time to investigate or prosecute bad-check cases; family members who suffer due to the prior felony-drug conviction of a potential breadwinner to secure employment, college loans, or public housing; battered spouses whose mates are not sent to jail because there's only room there for drug users; physicians who cannot treat their patients according to their conscience and the discipline of their profession; the sick and dying who endure unnecessary pain; children whose parents are taken from them; the police who have given up honorable and challenging work investigating and detecting crime because they have become addicted to and dependent upon an informant-based system; prosecutors and defense attorneys who have turned the temples of justice into plea-bargaining bazaars; and the judges who let this happen. Those innocent people are your constituents and they are becoming increasingly aware of the harms done to them in the name of protecting them from the scourge of illegal drugs. The public of ten years ago that would automatically elect anyone who claimed to be tough on crime is changing. A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press ( 2001 ) found that 74 percent of Americans believe the war on drugs is a failure. Public opinion increasingly favors using community punishment options instead of prison for nonviolent offenders. Separate polls published within the last year by Parade Magazine, ABC News and Peter Hart and Associates show two-thirds of the public supports supervision, treatment and community service in lieu of imprisonment for nonviolent offenders. Clearly, it won’t be long before these people realize that our drug policy is not only costly and completely ineffective at reducing drug use and abuse but is actually responsible for driving up drug use and crime. The repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws is only the first step in thorough revision of policy. The two groups who would suffer most from an elimination of the black market in drugs would be, in nearly equal measure, organized crime and law enforcement. Those who would benefit the most would be the people, especially children, who have never before tried drugs because there would be no economic incentive to turn them into customers. Those who are already addicted or abusing drugs or who will start to do so no matter what the law is can be offered treatment, rather than imprisoned, at a cost of one-seventh the amount needed to imprison them. We must be cautious about mandating treatment because not every addict will be drug free and because if we create another system of large scale treatment on top of the already-bloated prison system, we will not save money, but actually increase the amount of money we are spending for the fantasy of a drug free society .
Whether this body accepts our recommendation or not, we hope that you will recognize that our future safety, our ability to revitalize urban areas, attract business and investment, and ensure the welfare of our children depends on minimizing both the harm drugs cause users and the harm we cause by pursuing false objectives like a “drug- free America”. The street gangs and other criminals that control large sections of our cities and the collateral damage caused by the ineffective policies with which we have attempted to deal with them must be stopped. We can only do this by destroying their source of financial support, namely, the enormous profits made possible by our prohibitionist drug policies. A solid first step in this direction, one that would send a clear signal to America that New York is in the vanguard of serious criminal justice reform, is the repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws.
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