In local news… two cents on Rockefeller Drug Laws
Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance in New York City wrote a good article about attempts to reform the New York State’s Rockefeller Drug Laws. For those who don’t know - we have one of the most draconian set of drug laws in the country.
Mr. Sayegh writes about the special interests that actually stand in the way of reforming the laws that are considered unjust virtually by everybody on both sides of the fence separating the sides in the drugs laws reform debate:
“From 1817 to 1981, New York built 33 prisons. But from 1982 to 2000, New York built 38 more prisons — all of them upstate. The unprecedented prison boom was largely an economic development plan meant to ameliorate the job loss upstate. Rural, white communities were clamoring to build and staff prisons. The Rockefeller Drug Laws delivered the bodies with harsh mandatory-minimum sentences for low-level drug offenses.”
and,
” More than 76 percent of the state’s prison inmates come from New York City. The U.S. Census Bureau counts them as residents of the upstate prisons in which they’re incarcerated, not as residents of the communities from which they came.
Why does this matter? According to the Prison Policy Initiative, if prisoners were not counted as “residents,” seven upstate Senate districts would be 5 percent short of their required population size, and thus have to be redrawn. This means that senators in those districts — all of them Republicans — would lose their seats, causing Republicans to lose their slim Senate majority. Unsurprisingly, Senate Republicans remain staunch opponents of repealing the Rockefeller Drug Laws.”
And, by the way, speaking of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, read about the history of their enactment in Edward Jay Epstein’s Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America. It’s only one short chapter and here’s the direct link:
“Shocking” doesn’t even begin to describe what you’ll learn.
admin :: May.05.2007 :: Laws, statutes, regulations, Social Policy :: No Comments »