America's Longest and Deadliest Conflict: The War on Drugs and Communities of Color


by Asha Bandele - Date: 2007-01-20 - Word Count: 795 Share This!

Last year's mid-term elections did more than shift power to the democrats on a federal level. On the state level, including in New York State, democrats assumed control of a number of governorships as well. Eliot Spitzer, who has long stood against corporate and political corruption, handily won New York's top legislative position. As with most of those who ran successful campaigns, he won largely based on a reform platform, with the promise that "business as usual" in Albany would be a thing of the past. One of the reforms Spitzer, along with running mate David Paterson and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, said he would vigorously pursue is reform of our poorly conceived and consequentially disastrous state drug laws.

Enacted in 1973 under then New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the drug laws that bear his name were supposed to remove the most egregious offenders, kingpins, from the streets. Thirty years later, the Rockefeller drug laws have been universally declared a resounding failure in this regard. The result: today most of the people incarcerated in New York for drug offenses are low-level, nonviolent offenders. And drugs? Well, they're cheaper and more available now than they were 30 years ago. Nevertheless, variations of the Rockefeller drug laws have spread across the nation like an airborne virus.

Due in part to draconian policies like the Rockefeller Drug Laws, the U.S. now holds the unenviable position of incarcerating more people than any other nation on the planet. Indeed, we have just 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prison population. Half a million of the 2.2 million people sitting in a prison cell right now are in for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses. There are fewer people in prison for all crimes in Western Europe (with a much larger population). As New York's new governor reviews these laws, he should weigh these facts along with one more: in his state, 92% of the people serving time for drug offenses are African-American or Latino. This is the case even though rates of drug use are roughly the same across racial lines.

Consider the case of Ashley O'Donoghue, now serving a sentence of 7 to 21 years in a New York State prison. In the fall of 2003, Ashley, who is African-American, was 20-years-old. For reasons his mother Cheri still does not understand, he began to sell drugs. Among his regular customers were two young white men named Peter and Preston. They would buy from Ashley and in turn re-sell the drugs on their Hamilton College campus. And then one day, Peter and Preston were busted by local police. They identified Ashley as the primary source and the cops convinced them to order a whopping 70 grams of cocaine from him.

Never before had Ashley moved such a large quantity before, but at their request-really law enforcement's request, he supplied the drugs. Upon his arrival at the campus by train, Ashley was promptly arrested. Normally, with 70 grams on him, a life sentence would have been automatically triggered. In the end, Ashley didn't get a life sentence, but he hardly got the break Peter and Preston got. Both informants received probation, while Ashley, out of fear of getting a life sentence, pleaded out to a B-class felony, under which the sentencing guidelines do not allow for a life sentence. But, because he pleaded guilty, he also lost the right to appeal his case.

This is a common story, the story of most of the people sitting in New York prisons for drug offenses. They are not kingpins, never were kingpins, and their long incarceration periods do nothing to reduce drug use and abuse. Ashley's mother has acknowledged that her son must take responsibility for his wrongdoing, but to be placed under the control of corrections for two decades? That's excessive-not to mention expensive. It winds up playing out along race lines and, to paraphrase Rev. Jesse Jackson, to have a workable system of law and order, there must be one yardstick for justice. The Rockefeller Drug Laws, aside from failing to meet their stated goal of removing kingpins from our neighborhoods, functions as a two-tiered system: one white, one for communities of color. It functions with two yardsticks. And that's wrong.

In December of 2004, the first reforms to Rockefeller were made. But by far the largest number of people whose lives could be improved by these reforms, continue to sit in prison absorbing scarce taxpayer dollars while, in the meantime, drug use and abuse remains fixed or rising. Spitzer and his team promised to make the drug laws in New York just and reasoned. I would urge them to set a new trend in what drug policy should look like and I urge them to do it sooner rather than later.

Copyright www.BlackandBrownNews.com 2007


Related Tags: justice, latino, drugs, politics, black, laws, prison, criminal, sentencing, nonviolent offenders

Asha Bandele is a journalist, author and contributor to http://www.BlackandBrownNews.com

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