DRUG-FREE SCHOOL ZONES KEEPING PRISON CELLS FULL

It seemed like a good idea at the time. If you want to be serious
about fighting crime, make rules that are very strict and inflexible.

A prime example was the law that says if someone is convicted of a
drug crime within 1,000 feet of a school, they will be subject to a
more severe penalty than someone who is arrested 1,001 feet from a
school. Caught within the zone, you face a mandatory prison sentence
of three years with no parole. Even a judge can't change it. Outside
the zone, though, plea bargains, probation, treatment and the like
are much-used alternatives to incarceration.

Over the 18 years that law has been on the books, it has gotten
results -- just not good ones. A greater share of New Jersey inmates
- -- 33 percent -- is in prison for drug-related crimes than in any
other state. In 1986, only 11 percent of inmates in New Jersey were
incarcerated for drug-related offenses.

In 1986, inmates convicted of violent crimes accounted for 61 percent
of the state's prison population, compared to 40 percent today.

In 1986, 23 percent of whites and 22 percent of blacks entering
prison were charged with drug offenses. But today, 64 percent of New
Jersey's prisoners are black, while the state's black population is
14.5 percent of the total. And, over the past 20 years, spending in
New Jersey on corrections -- building, maintaining and staffing
prisons -- has risen by about 500 percent.

The bottom line is that the school-zone law and a companion measure
that also sets a 1,000-foot zone around parks, day care centers and
other facilities where children are likely to be present have had a
disproportionate racial impact when it comes to punishment for
relatively low-level, nonviolent drug-related crimes.

To figure out why, just go to a city. In cities, it is hard not to be
1,000 feet from a school or public place. According to one report,
there is just a tiny pocket of Hudson County near the Holland Tunnel
entrance that is not covered by the laws. But in suburbs and rural
areas, it is fairly easy to be out of range.

It's not as though the mandatory minimum sentencing law was aimed at
minorities. The intent was to help protect children from drugs. It
just goes about it in a seriously ill-advised manner. Consider this:
A study by the Boston University School of Public Health on a
similar law in Massachusetts found that fewer than 1 percent of the
people convicted of drug sales within a school zone were selling to
minors or were even on school property.

Fortunately, in New Jersey there is a vehicle for restoring some
sanity to the process. The Commission to Review Criminal Sentencing,
created in January 2004 by then-Gov. James E. McGreevey, recently
recommended establishing zones of 200 feet around schools and 500
feet in other areas covered by the law. Drug-dealing in the covered
areas would be punishable with prison terms of five to 10 years, but
without any mandatory minimum.

It's a win-win recommendation: protection for children and discretion
for judges so that if they feel, for example, that drug treatment
(which costs less and often has better results) makes more sense than
time in prison, they can make sure it happens.

Adopting this and other reforms would fit in with a national trend
that has eluded New Jersey. Even New York, which instituted some of
the nation's harshest drug laws under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, has
been moving in the other direction. And, not long ago, Pennsylvania
Gov. Edward Rendell signed a law aimed at moving nonviolent drug
offenders more quickly into treatment.

Reforming the get-tough laws of the past often is uniting liberals
and conservatives. The moral qualms of one group are merging with the
spending worries of the other. As stated in a 2004 report by the Vera
Institute of Justice, "Fiscal concerns are providing common ground
- -- and a political safe haven -- for officials of all political
stripes looking to temper reliance on incarceration."

Whatever the motivation, let's welcome the effort. And when
supporters of reform are attacked for being "soft on crime," as they
are certain to be, stand up for common sense.

- - Jon Shure is president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan organization in Trenton that conducts research on state
issues.