ALBANY, N.Y. — Hundreds of low-level drug offenders in New York prisons became eligible Wednesday for shortened sentences or release under recent changes in state law.
Gov. David Paterson and lawmakers agreed in April to revise the Rockefeller-era drug laws, once among the harshest in the nation and in the vanguard of a movement more than 30 years ago toward mandatory prison terms. They argued that lower-level offenders would be better served by addiction treatment rather than prison.
“Under the Rockefeller Drug Laws, we did not treat the people who were addicted. We locked them up,” Paterson said Wednesday at the Brooklyn Court House. “Families were broken, money was wasted, and we continued to wrestle with a statewide drug problem.”
The changes that took effect Wednesday allow resentencing some inmates and give judges discretion to start sending some new offenders to drug treatment or shock programs instead of prison.
In 1973, then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller persuaded lawmakers to pass tough mandatory sentencing laws, saying they were needed to fight a drug-related “reign of terror.” The strictest provisions were removed in 2004.
New York Legal Aid Society lawyer Bill Givney said Tuesday his office has about 270 New York City cases among the roughly 1,100 inmates statewide identified by state officials as eligible for resentencing and has been examining records to verify their status. “We’re certainly ready to file quite a number of petitions in the near future,” he said.
Once petitions are filed at the defendants’ original criminal courts, prosecutors have a chance to respond, then it’s up to the judge to schedule a proceeding and rule, Givney said.
The Drug Policy Alliance, which advocated the changes, has been meeting with agencies and treatment providers to try to ensure released inmates get the addiction, mental health and other services they need to return to life outside prison, said Gabriel Sayegh, director of the alliance’s state organizing and policy project.
New York’s prisons had 59,053 inmates Wednesday, with another 708 at the Willard Drug Treatment Center and 80 at a residential treatment facility for parole violators, corrections spokeswoman Linda Foglia said. Under another change that took effect in July, more than 100 inmates, including some in their 40s, were transferred from general prison populations to six-month military-style boot camp programs.