Rethinking Rockefeller
A couple weeks back I was working on an article for Lives in Focus, a web site that deals with how the criminal justice affects the family members of the most imprisoned population in the world. It was just after the election and I was assigned to write about how the first democratic majority in the NY State senate in more than four decades might affect mandatory minimum sentencing law in New York.
Under Governor Rockefeller laws were enacted in 1973 that created mandatory sentences for drug offenses. While the crime rate has drastically declined in New York City over the last fifteen years–a fact some attributed to these laws, which in fact far preceded the decline–many have criticized the state’s tough laws as blunt and expensive.
Prof. Peter Moskos at John Jay College well sums up what many see as the failing of the laws:
“The problem with the drug laws is that they don’t draw any distinction between major and minor players. If the laws are repealed it’s not that we’re decriminalizing drugs. We’re just returning discretion to judges in their sentencing.“
I heard over and over that the laws had had their day and would be shortly scrapped. But more than the political climate, criminal justice experts and prison reform advocates alike pointed to the state’s fiscal crisis as the impetus for a radical change in drug offense sentencing. Money talks. Change it seemed was on the way.
On what many see as the verge of a break with these laws, I wanted to look back at some of the small time players who were affected by the laws.
Anthony Papa is one such small timer. More than twenty years ago, a small businessman with money trouble, he took a chance and decided to courier an envelope of cocaine from the Bronx to Westchester. His first time would be his last. He was caught in a police sting and sentenced to 15 years in Sing Sing.
When I met him, he had been free more than ten years, after having been granted clemency by Gov. Pataki after he began painting in prison and his work was shown at the Whitney. I talked with him about his efforts to reform the drug laws and his work as an artist.
