Memorandum In Support Of The Reform Of The Rockefeller Drug Laws And To Permit Judicial Discretion In Sentencing
A7078/ Aubry

March 2004

Interfaith IMPACT of New York State is a statewide advocacy organization representing Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, and Reform Jewish congregations and individuals. We address emerging public policies and their legislative implications from our shared faith traditions, which derive from the historic teachings of our faith in God and humankind, and which call upon all people to participate in the ongoing work of perfecting the world.

Religious and civic leaders, editorial boards, and community organizations are all calling for a reform of the Rockefeller drug laws. As Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of NY, stated in his Albany Times Union essay, we have known the truth about these laws for a long time. They are unjust, ineffective, racially biased, and enormously wasteful. These 1973 statutes have caused, rather than solved, problems including draining state resources by fueling skyrocketing prison costs.

New York State is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars by investing in incarceration on a massive scale, rather than in treatment and prevention. The NYS Division of the Budget noted, in a report issued in 2000, that the annual operating budget for NYS prisons has increased from $450 million in fiscal year 1982-83 to more than $2 billion in 2002. New York taxpayers pay approximately $32,000 per inmate annually, compared to about $20,000 for residential drug treatment and less than $5,000 for outpatient treatment.

Moreover, these drug laws have had a devastating impact on communities of color, breaking up families and leaving children to be raised without one or both parents. It is not being "soft on crime" to let judges evaluate the situation of non-violent offenders who could be rehabilitated in a community setting where they have support of families and other community services. And such an approach is fiscally prudent and humanely sensible.

Last year a New York Times poll indicated that 79 percent of New Yorkers favor a return to judicial discretion in drug cases. The members of Interfaith IMPACT of New York State consider drug law reform one of our highest priorities.

Thirty years have passed, and the mandatory sentences have filled our prisons, disrupted families, and caused the loss of a generation of (mostly) young men who could have been given treatment and become productive members of our communities. Let's reform the system and save as many as we can, now.

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