Johnny's quote in the report was stark: "We didn't care. We were so high -- you'd get so high that sometimes we'd need money and we'd choose which one we didn't like in the neighborhood."
You don't need to be a prosecutor to grasp how frequently Johnny's story, reported in a 2002 Vera Institute of Justice study, is repeated every day. As sad as his and endless similar stories are, the real tragedy is that we have the ability to help Johnny change his life, but only if we are willing to reach out and embrace the possible and in doing so, not only help Johnny, his family and his community, but enhance public safety.
As a former prosecutor of violent crimes, I applaud New York's state legislature for replacing the mandatory-minimum sentences of the Rockefeller Drug Laws with judicial discretion to divert non-violent, low-level drug offenders into treatment programs rather than sentencing them to state prison. (Under the reform legislation enacted in recent days, drug kingpins, violent felons, those who possess illegal guns or who sell drugs to children would not be eligible for diversion to drug treatment and would continue to be sent where they belong -- prison.)
The simple, indisputable fact is that non-violent individuals with substance abuse problems benefit much more from treatment than prison. And this is not just true of adults.
The number one reported need of kids caught up in the criminal justice system in New York City is adequate substance abuse treatment. One of the best ways to achieve long-term reductions in crime is to intervene early in the lives of at-risk kids and clearly one of the best ways to do this is to provide substance abuse treatment. Isn't it much better policy to intervene in the lives of at-risk kids when they are young rather than to incarcerate them when they are older?
A RAND Drug Policy Research Center study determined that treatment of drug users is the most effective use of tax dollars to reduce illicit drug use and related crime and found mandatory sentences the least effective. Columbia University-based CASA, a drug policy think tank, determined that the state would save significant money by diverting low-level offenders to an already up-and-running drug treatment program.
Successful diversion programs will aid our efforts to achieve long-term reductions in crime by ending the cycle of drug abuse, dependency and crime and by strengthening families and communities, particularly for African-American and Latino families that have been so disproportionately affected by the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws.
Shamefully, Governor Rockefeller led much of the country toward the adoption of sentencing laws that led to ineffective mass long-term costly incarcerations of hundreds of thousands of poor, mostly African-American and Latino, low-level drug offenders.
By enacting the drug law sentencing reform legislation, New York is now leading the nation again -- this time in the right direction -- toward a public health approach to substance abuse.
This is an enormous accomplishment though there is still more to do. For starters, we must ensure adequate resources to meet the demand for treatment. Doing so will strengthen, not weaken, public safety. We must also continue to work for retroactive sentencing relief for non-violent offenders who remain incarcerated under obsolete laws and eliminate residual disparities in the sentencing laws. But we all owe a debt to the advocates who have worked tirelessly for decades to achieve this round of reform.
We now stand poised to transform national drug law policy toward a public health approach. Senators James Webb and Arlen Specter have introduced a bipartisan proposal to study the nation's entire criminal justice system, with an eye toward revisiting the role of incarceration in drug sentencing policies.
Let's embrace the possible. Now is the time to replace the failed war on drugs with a Marshall plan for substance abuse treatment.
Richard Aborn is a former Manhattan prosecutor, former president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, and a candidate for Manhattan District Attorney
