NCJ Number
235532
Date Published
February 2010
Length
30 pages
Annotation
In order to establish a baseline for future reports that assess the impact of New York State's 2009 drug law changes, this report presents information on the criminal justice processing of felony drug cases, beginning from the time of implementation of the Rockefeller Drug Laws in 1973 and ending in 2008, the year before enactment of the 2009 Drug Law Reform.
Abstract
The number of felony drug arrests, indictments, and commitments to State prison all increased dramatically from 1973 through the late 1980s under New York's Rockefeller Drug laws, which mandated long prison sentences for many drug offenders. Arrests and indictments peaked in 1989, and commitments peaked in 1992. Although arrests, indictments, and commitments all declined beginning in the 1990s, the numbers remained at much higher levels than were recorded in earlier years. The 40, 209 felony drug arrests in 2008 were nearly triple the number in 1973 (14,679). Even through felony drug commitments reached a 20-year low in 2008 (5,190) that number is still more than 6 times the number committed in 1973 (834). In April 2009, the New York State Legislature instituted significant changes to the drug laws. Mandatory prison sentences for some drug offenses were eliminated, and minimum sentence lengths were reduced for others. In October 2009, Article 216 of the Penal Law became effective, expanding judicial discretion to offer drug court alternatives to certain addicted nonviolent offenders. This report has been prepared primarily as a reference document and will serve as a baseline for understanding the impact of the new laws within each county. Numerous appendixes provide detailed information at the county level. Extensive tabular data