Last Revised: 4/30/99

Colleges Fall, But Prisons Rise In State Support

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

        In the last 10 years, New York State increased spending on prisons by almost as much as it decreased allocations to higher education, according to a study released yesterday criticizing the Pataki administration's spending priorities.
        State support for the operating budgets of public universities decreased 29 percent, by $615 million, to $1.5 billion in 1998, while prison funding increased 76 percent, by $761 million, to $1.76 billion, according to the analysis.
        The report, "New York State of Mind?" was released by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute and the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit group that monitors the penal system.
        In the last year, the Justice Policy Institute has been studying state spending on prisons and higher education. It has reported that from 1984 to 1994 prison spending in California rose 209 percent, compared with 15 percent for higher education. From 1992 to 1994, Florida's correction department received a $450 million increase in funding, a greater increase than its state university system received in the last 10 years.
        The report criticized the Rockefeller drug laws, which require mandatory sentences for minor drug offenses and have been credited with swelling the prison population in New York, which is 70,000. About one-third of the prisoners are in for drug crimes. The study blames the laws for the increase in prison spending.
        Mr. Pataki's spokesman, Patrick McCarthy, said the Governor stood behind his spending initiatives.
        Mr. McCarthy said it was worth noting that spending for kindergarten through high school was $11.8 billion this year, a record amount and $847 million more than in the previous year. The report covers only higher education.
        Joe Conway, a spokesman for the Governor's budget office, said staff members scrutinizing the figures in the study could not confirm the numbers cited in the report. He nevertheless called the numbers into question, noting that they came from Democrats in the Senate. Mr. Pataki is a Republican.
        Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association, denied partisanship and noted that the report said the trend toward more prison spending began under Democratic governors, before Mr. Pataki took office.

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