by Mark Pickens
Miguel Acosta, a 37 year old Harlem resident, knows New York state's harsh drug laws firsthand. “The Rockefeller laws are no joke. I’m living proof of that,” he said in an interview during Saturday’s Drop the Rock rally in Marcus Garvey Park. In 1988 Acosta was arrested for possession of four ounces of cocaine and sentenced to 15 years to life. It was Acosta’s first offence of any kind. “The judge had no choice but to sentence me [to fifteen years],” he said. Acosta served 14 years in a New York State prison and was released earlier this year. His twin son and daughter, two years old when he entered prison, are now in high school.
Hundreds of protestors hit Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem Saturday to demand repeal of New York State’s harsh Rockefeller drug laws. The Rockefeller laws impose long mandatory sentences for possession of relatively small amounts of narcotics and disproportionately affect minorities.The colorful event, accompanied by a drum corps and cheerleaders from a Harlem high school, is the latest rally organized by Drop the Rock, a coalition of 200 state and city legislators, activists and community organizations.
The Rockefeller laws were enacted in 1973 under then-governor Nelson Rockefeller. They significantly increased prison sentences for drug possession and established mandatory sentencing rules that judges must follow in punishing individuals.
Critics of the laws claim that their effect falls most heavily on people of color. While statistics show that the majority of drug users and sellers are white, 94 percent of the approximately 19,000 drug offenders currently in New York State prisons are Black or Latino, according to the Correctional Association of New York.
“The whole system is essentially racist in its application,” said Bob Perry of the New York American Civil Liberties Union. “If middle and upper class white people were being arrested and incarcerated at this rate for the use and possession of small amounts of drugs, then you’d see reform of these laws immediately.”
Miguel Acosta, a 37 year old Harlem resident, knows the laws firsthand. “The Rockefeller laws are no joke. I’m living proof of that,” he said in an interview during Saturday’s rally. In 1988 Acosta was arrested for possession of four ounces of cocaine and sentenced to 15 years to life. It was Acosta’s first offence of any kind. The judge had no discretion in determining his sentence due to the Rockefeller laws’ mandatory sentencing rules, however. “The judge had no choice but to sentence me [to fifteen years],” said Acosta.
Acosta served 14 years in a New York State prison and was released earlier this year. His twin son and daughter, two years old when he entered prison, are now in high school. Acosta’s brother was also convicted of cocaine possession and is currently serving a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life. “We are eagerly awaiting repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws so he can come home,” said Acosta, accompanied at Saturday’s rally by his mother.
Apart from the effect of mandatory sentences on Black and Latino families, opponents charge that the drug laws give too little attention to drug treatment as a way to cut crime and save limited state funds. Under the present Rockefeller drug laws, prosecutors, not judges, have the discretion to divert someone from prison to a drug treatment program. “It just seems to me to be an illogical arrangement where the prosecutor decides on treatment. It’s their job to put people in jail,” said Bob Perry of the New York ACLU.
Perry also pointed out the high cost of incarceration in comparison to drug treatment. While it costs $32,000 per year to keep an inmate in New York State prison, most outpatient drug treatment programs cost an average of $3,600 per person and residential drug rehabilitation costs $21,000, according to a report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Lynn Paltrow, a mother of two children attending Manhattan public schools, was at Saturday’s rally to protest the Rockefeller laws’ effect on public education spending. For her, the mandatory sentences mean New York spends too much money building new prisons, starving other programs.
Paltrow sees a direct link between the $2 billion New York has spent on new prisons and recent cuts in public education. “The truth is we do have the money [for education] in this state. We just choose to spend it on incarceration,” she said. From 1988 to 1998, New York State increased annual prison spending by $761 million and decreased spending on city and state universities by $615 million, according to documents published by the State budget office.
The Drop the Rock Coalition hopes to win repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws. But they are not the only ones politicking over the laws. Governor Pataki and the New York State Assembly leadership are currently negotiating a reform of the 29 year old laws. Their reform would expand funding for drug treatment overall but bar more classes of convicts from eligibility for the programs. The proposed reforms also make minor changes to the mandatory sentencing rules and length of sentences.
