CHANGING DRUG-FREE ZONE LAWS MAKES SENSE

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 that occurs 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 the law has been on the books, it certainly
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, compared to 11 percent
in 1986. In 1986, 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 African-American, though only 14.5 percent of
the state's entire population.

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 lamentably disproportionate racial impact when it comes to
punishment for relatively low-level, non-violent drug-related crimes.
To figure out why, just go to a city. The reality is that 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 less 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 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 so far 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 non-violent drug offenders more quickly into
treatment. Interestingly, reforming the get-tough laws of the past is
often 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.