NY Drug Laws: In New Data, a Redefinition of Drug Felon

• Although Impetus of Drug law change was to reduce number Blacks locked up only 1/3 are impacted

New data from New York's Department of Correctional Services are providing a clearer - and in some ways surprising - picture of the population of long-term inmates eligible to be released or to have their sentences reduced under changes to state drug laws that Gov. George E. Pataki signed into law last week. The inmates are the roughly 440 so-called A-1 felons, sentenced to at least 15 years to life in prison under the Rockefeller drug laws for possessing or selling narcotics. The new data suggest that these prisoners are in some ways very different from the general prison population, and even from lower-level drug offenders. Although experts disagree about why this is and what it means, they agree that the new numbers provide a first real snapshot of those affected by the changes in the Rockefeller laws, which were instituted in the 1973 and put first-time offenders behind bars based merely on the amount of drugs they were caught with. Critics have called the laws unduly harsh and said they unduly penalized young African-American men, and women who were involved with someone in the drug trade. But according to the new data, almost half of the A-1 felons were born outside the United States, coming from about 20 different countries. The largest group by far after native New Yorkers, which account for more than a quarter of the A-1's, is from the Dominican Republic.[more]