It has been evident for some time now that the craze to establish “drug-free” zones around schools, parks, libraries, museums and public-housing projects has accomplished one thing and one thing only — filled most of the state’s prison cells with drug users and pushers, nearly all of whom are minorities, at enormous cost to the state treasury.
With New Jersey’s corrections budget topping $1 billion a year, and no evidence that mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes committed near schools or other proscribed areas have any deterrent value at all, the Corzine administration is wisely looking into alternatives.
The current law mandates minimum jail terms of one to three years for anyone who sells drugs or possesses them in significant quantities within 1,000 feet of a school, or 500 feet of a park, library, museum or public-housing project.
The effectiveness of this law was debunked two years ago by the New Jersey Commission to Review Criminal Sentencing. The commission concluded that the zones do not deter drug sales near schools, or anywhere else, for that matter. It also found that 96 percent of those jailed for drug-free zone offenses were black or Hispanic.
The commission recommended shrinking all of the drug-free zones to 200 feet, and eliminating mandatory minimum sentences while increasing the maximum prison term for violations. The Legislature sat on these recommendations. Then, in October, an appeals court ruling brought the absurdity of the current law into stark relief.
In a case involving a New Brunswick man who received a mandatory minimum sentence for possession and intent to distribute cocaine within 500 feet of a museum, the court ruled that the law makes no exception even for a museum that is almost never open to the public. The crime was properly elevated from a third-degree to a second-degree crime, the court ruled, because it was committed within 500 feet of the New Brunswick Fire Museum, a city-owned firehouse that contains a working model of a steam-powered fire engine. It made no difference that this artifact is shown by appointment only.
Now, finally, a concerted effort is being mounted to change the law. Gov. Corzine, backed by the state attorney general and all 21 county prosecutors, has publicly endorsed the commission’s plan to shrink the drug-free zones and stiffen the penalties. The governor contends that New Jersey’s prison cells should be occupied primarily by people who commit the most serious and violent crimes — rather than those whose drug-related transgressions happened, often by mere coincidence, to have taken place within an arbitrarily defined geographic area. (In Newark, 76 percent of the city is within 1,000 feet of a school or 500 feet of a park, library, museum or public-housing project. In Hudson County, some municipalities are covered entirely by these overlapping circles.)
It will be up to the Legislature, however, to amend the law — and there appears to be little enthusiasm in either the Senate or Assembly to do so. Even the usually moderate Senate President Richard Codey is against it, saying it “sends the wrong message.” Among Republicans, Somerset County Assemblyman Peter Biondi sums up what seems to be the prevailing view: “If I could make my entire district drug-free, I would do that.”
In other words, perpetuating a law that corrections officials and law-enforcement professionals alike have deemed worthless — and pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into this effort — is easier than embracing needed change and risking the appearance, which may be exploited by some future political opponent, of being “soft on crime.”
So much for rational, fact-supported, cost-effective lawmaking by our elected representatives.
