Rockefeller Drug Laws Create Racial Disparities in Rochester
Testimony of Gary Pudup, on behalf of the Genesee Valley Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union before The New York State Assembly Committees on Codes, Judiciary, Correction, Health, Alcoholism and Drug Use, and Social Services regarding The Rockefeller Drug Laws.
My name is Gary Pudup. I am the director of the Genesee Valley Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, a state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. My office, located here in Rochester, serves nine upstate counties: Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Orleans, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates. Our mission is to preserve and protect the Constitutional freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights for all who live in America.
I have been the director of the Genesee Valley Chapter for one year. In my previous life I was a member of the law enforcement community for 29 years. At the beginning of my career in law enforcement I worked for the New York State Attorney General as a criminal investigator. I went on to serve as an officer in two local police departments: Rochester and Irondequoit. But I spent the bulk of my career — 20 years — with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department as a watch commander and the commander of the internal affairs unit. When I retired, I held the rank of lieutenant.
I am a veteran of drug law enforcement in upstate New York, and it has been my opinion for quite some time that the state’s approach to the drug problem has been ineffective and harmful. If the individuals arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated for Rockefeller Drug Law violations had been given treatment and rehabilitation services, many if not most of them would never have become enmeshed in the criminal justice system in the first place. One of my highest priorities since becoming director of the Genesee Valley NYCLU has been to oppose the Rochester Police Department’s recently adopted Zero Tolerance Initiative which targets predominantly poor communities of color for aggressive drug law enforcement.
Last week you heard from my colleague Robert Perry, the legislative director of the NYCLU, about why our organization supports major changes in the state’s drug sentencing laws. To briefly summarize:
- First, mandatory minimum sentences subvert the integrity of our system of criminal justice by relegating the judge to the role of bystander in the courtroom and giving undue power to one of the adversarial parties — the prosecution. This results in the incarceration of many nonviolent defendants, including first time offenders, addicts, and people who played extremely peripheral roles in a drug transaction. Most persons incarcerated for drug offenses in New York have been convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses.
- Second, contrary to the claims of some prosecutors, the Rockefeller Drug Laws have been ineffective in reducing crime or enhancing public safety. A quick look at the New York Crime Index Rates bears this out. In 1973 there were 11 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants of our state. By 1990, after 17 years of vigorous Rockefeller Drug Law enforcement, there were 14.5 homicides per every 100,000 New Yorkers. The same trend is seen in robbery rates, another important index crime. In 1973 there were 442 robberies per 100,000 inhabitants; by 1990 the rate had increased to one of the highest recorded rates — 625 per 100,000. This represents failure, not success.
- Third, New York State’s drug laws have caused many unintended and avoidable harms. They have diminished the opportunity for economic and life success for many thousands of formerly incarcerated persons who suffer extremely high unemployment rates. They have contributed to the disintegration of already vulnerable families. And through the constant removal and return of prisoners, they have destabilized our most vulnerable inner-city neighborhoods and communities.
- Twenty-five percent of adults sent to prison from Rochester come from areas with just 7 percent of the city’s adult population. Almost one in three is admitted for drug offenses and 92 percent are black or Latino. In analyzing the racial and ethnic disparities in the population incarcerated for drug offenses, we have focused on two Rochester communities that have comparable numbers of inhabitants: Sector 6 which comprises the Highland neighborhood; and Sector 9, known as the Northeast neighborhood.
- Just 24 percent of the population in Sector 9 is non-Latino white. In other words, the area is populated largely by persons of color. In 2006, at least 204 residents of the district were incarcerated; 61 of those individuals (30 percent of the total) were sent to prison for drug offenses.
- The demographics of Sector 6 are quite different: 65 percent non-Latino white. In 2006, just 19 persons living in the sector were sent to prison. Of those, only three — or 16 percent — were sent to prison for drug offenses.
- Sector 8 is especially interesting. The west side, where prison admissions are high, is poor and black. The east side, where prison admissions are much lower, is the upper class Winton Road neighborhood, where the mayor lives.
- New York State taxpayers will spend more than $27.5 million to imprison Rochester residents convicted of drug offenses in 2006 – accounting for over 22 percent of incarceration costs for all Rochester residents sent to prison that year. More than $6.5 million will be spent to incarcerate the 61 drug offenders from Sector 9, while $400,000 will be spent to incarcerate the three people from Sector 6.