Pubdate: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 Source: Associated Press (Wire) Copyright: 2003 Associated Press Cited: Drug Policy Alliance http://drugpolicy.org/ Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) 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." - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl