The New York Times has been broadcasting the imminent death of the Rockefeller Laws for the past couple of weeks, claiming the Assembly Bill spells the end of the draconian laws that compelled judges to sentence defendant accused of sale or possession of drugs to absurdly long mandatory minimum sentences.  Today, the Times has another editorial, arguing against the Senate version following the Assembly’s approval last week.

The Assembly voted last week to restore judicial discretion and end mandatory sentencing for many nonviolent low-level drug crimes. The bill, which has been introduced in the State Senate as well, would limit the longstanding and widely discredited system under which prosecutors decide who goes to jail and for how long.

Once the measure becomes law, courts would be able to sentence many addicts to treatment instead of cramming them into prisons where addiction generally goes untreated.

Republican senators who represent prison districts have long obstructed reforms like these. The latest attempt seems likely to succeed now that Democrats control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the Legislature — if Assembly lawmakers can broker a deal with the governor and some prosecutors in the state.

The prime sticking point is likely to involve a provision of the Assembly bill that deals with second-time offenders — who make up the largest group of people jailed under the laws. The Assembly bill would do away with mandatory sentences for low-level, second-time offenders who have not committed violent crimes.

Much as I hate to sound like an old curmudgeon, this is all nonsense.  The Assembly bill, touted by the Times as the end of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, hardly means the death of the Rockefeller laws.  It’s not even half a loaf.  Maybe a slice or two, but that’s it.

For those unfamiliar, the Rockefeller laws were predicated on the simplistic theory that if there are extraordinarily harsh mandatory penalties for drugs, people will stop selling and using them.  It produced the need for prisons, lots of them, which were located in upstate counties with high unemployment.  It did nothing to stem the tide of drugs.  As examples of the draconian penalties, possession of 4 ounces or sale of 2 ounces of a scheduled drug constituted an A-1 felony, the same as murder, and compelled a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life in prison.  The laws are structured solely upon the weight of the drugs, as if the mule knows whether the suitcase contains an ounce or a kilo.

The bills don’t end mandatory sentencing.  The bills allow judges at the bottom of the weight spectrum to divert first time offenders to drug treatment, upon pain of mandatory sentencing should they fail to satisfactorily complete it.  Woo hoo.  While I have nothing against treatment, and believe that it should have always been available to those in need (and it’s still not available to those in prison, though drugs usually are, and the treatment that’s available on the outside remains of dubious value), let’s not proclaim that the problem is solved.

The death of the Rockefeller Drug Laws will come when New York eliminates mandatory minimum sentences, and leaves it in the hands of judges to determine the proper sentence for each individual defendant under the particular circumstances of each individual case.  As of now, this isn’t even a twinkle in Assembly Leader Shelly Silver’s eye.  Neither Silver, nor Governor Paterson, have any plans on leaving judges to do their jobs, at least not without their hands placed firmly in their sphincters.  Is it that they can’t trust those activist judges to sentence properly, or they can’t let go of a political pendulum that could quickly swing the other way and cut their throats?

Mr. Paterson and his allies in law enforcement believe that would send the wrong message to the communities where drug crimes are committed and to the police officers who have worked hard to make these cases. They also fear that without mandatory sentences, some offenders might ignore treatment sanctions. But sentencing statistics show that judges can be very harsh in such cases.

As anyone in the trenches knows, New York’s judges are no more pushovers than anywhere else, and they can indeed be quite harsh without any prodding.  The fear is that the politicians won’t be well-positioned to take credit for putting the miscreants behind bars forever if they can’t lay claim to the mandatory sentencing laws. 

If this is the best New York can muster with a Democratic Governor, Assembly and Senate, then it’s clear that the Rockefeller Drug Laws are going to be with us for a long time to come, if not forever.  Whether that’s fine with everyone is one thing, but these claims that the Rockefeller laws are dead is just another cynical political ploy. The New York Times is either ignorant or enabling in perpetrating this fiction on the people of New York. Maybe if they had a few reporters left on the payroll, someone could explain to the editors what the bills mean, and stop this journalistic lunacy.