Title: http://www
http://www.binghamtonpress.com/binghamtonnews/local/Monews5.html
Report takes state prisons to task Lawmakers
accused of using drug laws to create upstate jobs
By KYLE HUGHES Albany Bureau Writer
ALBANY - Influential state
legislators oppose the repeal of harsh drug-crime laws because longer sentences
produce more inmates and prisons, which mean more jobs for the economically
depressed upstate region, a new report on New York's prison-building program
concludes.
Upstate
lawmakers have a vested interest in keeping those laws on the books because it
continues the flow of prisoners into their communities and increases the
pressure to build more prisons, charged Robert Gangi of the City Project,
a Manhattan-based civic group that issued the report called Following the
Dollars: Where New York State Spends its Prison Moneys.
The group
is seeking the repeal of the 1973 Rockefeller Drug Laws, which require judges
to impose long prison terms for drug crimes, such as 15 years to life for
selling two ounces or possessing four ounces of a narcotic.
The
report out today says that 93 percent of New York's 71,000 state inmates are
confined in prisons built in state Senate districts represented by Republicans,
and 98 percent of all new prisons built in the last 17 years were located in
upstate GOP Senate districts.
Gangi
said the trend has meant that mostly white rural communities have benefited
economically at the expense of mostly poor minority neighborhoods. Blacks and
Hispanics make up 25 percent of the state's population, but 83 percent of
people in prison; 94 percent of those incarcerated for drugs are black or
Hispanic. The report notes that 20 years ago, roughly the same number of
whites, blacks and Hispanics went to prison for drugs in New York.
This
highly skewed racial breakdown persists despite the fact that research by the
federal government's Department of Health and Human Services has consistently
shown that whites make up the vast majority of people who use drugs, the
report says.
The
report said white drug use usually takes place behind closed doors, in business
districts, or suburban settings away from law enforcement, while such
activities generally occur on the streets under the watchful eye of police in
minority communities.
Poor
defendants also lack access to drug treatment and good legal representation,
the report says.
The
building program - which was approved by both Republican and Democratic
legislators - means that prisons in those rural communities take in more than
$1.1 billion annually in state funds, including prison payrolls worth hundreds
of millions.
Gangi,
whose group opposes new prison construction, says the massive prison-building
program for upstate New York launched by Gov. Mario Cuomo and continued by Gov.
George Pataki represents a confluence of economic need and political
influence.
The report said the state
should find better methods of economic development for upstate communities and
consider alternatives to incarceration such as community drug treatment
programs.
Pataki has proposed building
another $180 million, 750-cell maximum-security prison to hold 1,500
double-bunked inmates. The location has not been determined, but it is expected
to be located in Western New York or the Mohawk Valley if approved as part of a
new budget.
That
drive to build more prisons to provide jobs upstate has come as the number of
people sent to prison for drug offenses has increased significantly. In 1998,
47 percent of the new inmates were sent there for drug offenses, compared to 11
percent in 1980.
The
report said 70 percent of state-prison inmates come from New York City, but
two-thirds of all prisons are located more than a three-hour drive from
downstate, cutting off family ties for many inmates.
The
report notes that 37 percent of New York's 71 prisons are located in the Senate
districts represented by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ronald Stafford,
R-Plattsburg, (12 prisons); Senate Codes Committee Chairman Dale Volker,
R-Depew, (eight); and Senate Crime Victims, Crime and Corrections Committee
Chairman Michael Nozzolio, R-Fayette, (six).
Another
nine prisons are in the district represented by Sen. John Bonacic,
R-Middletown, a junior member of the Legislature whose predecessor Charles Cook
was along-tenured Republican lawmaker.
That
means 49 percent of the state's prisons are located in just four GOP senators'
districts.
Nozzolio
called the report totally irresponsible. It's race-baiting at its
worst.
I
don't see many neighborhoods in New York City requesting prisons,
Nozzolio added.
Gangi
said there is undeniably a racial factor in the prison-building program because
it benefits white areas of the state by locking up poor non-whites.
That's
not race-baiting; that's an incredibly sound analysis that points to the racial
injustice practiced by the government, Gangi said.
The
report said that state officials
