Pubdate: Mon, 6 Oct 2008
Source: Times, The (Trenton, NJ)
Copyright: 2008 The Times
Contact:  http://www.nj.com/times/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/458
Author: George Amick
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?217 (Drug-Free Zones)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

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. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake