Schools or Jails for New York State?
by Marcela Putnam

New York continues to spend more money on prisons than it does on education. While this year’s budget includes a paltry 2% increase for CUNY’s senior colleges, it also includes $40 million reduction in TAP funding. In 1998, Governor E. Pataki cut $8.6 million from CUNY’s budget as well as $17.32 million from the SUNY budget while he continues to construct new prisons.

According to a report released by the Justice Policy Institute, New York State is spending almost double what it did to run its prisons a decade ago and is shifting the cost of running CUNY to New York City and its students. In 1988, the state spent more than twice as much on universities as it did on prisons; now the state spends $275 million more on prisons than on state and city colleges. The report says: “In actual dollars, there has nearly been an equal trade-off, with the Department of Correctional Services receiving a $761 million increase [between 1988–1998] while state funding for New York’s city and state university systems has declined by $615 million.”
Students at New York’s colleges have been hit the hardest by budget cuts. They are now faced with an increased tuition, hikes in incidental fees, and cuts in student aid. According to data compiled by the Student Association of State Universities, tuition has been rising above the rate of inflation since 1991: 1995–98 have seen the biggest jumps in tuition in New York history. CUNY tuition doubled during the decade and now provides nearly half of the operating budget, up from 18% in 1988.

The skyrocketing prison population is a result of New York State’s Rockefeller Drug Laws and similar severe laws in effect all around the nation. The Rockefeller Laws require a minimum prison term of fifteen years to life for a person convicted of selling two ounces of a narcotic or of possessing four ounces of drugs.

California, which has the largest prison system of any state, enforces the “three strikes” law, which requires a life sentence for individuals convicted of three felonies. This law has led to life sentences for offenses as petty as stealing a $20 bottle of vitamins. These laws have been widely condemned as costly and ineffective.

The U.S. Department of Justice revealed that the number of people behind bars in the United States reached 1.8 million at the end of 1998. Fifty-three percent of the inmates sentenced by state courts were convicted of nonviolent drug, property, or public offenses. Barry McCaffrey, the retired general who directed the White House’s drug control policy, said that these harsh sentencing laws “have caused thousands of low-level and first-time offenders to be incarcerated at high cost for long sentences that are disproportionate to their crimes.”
Despite a continuing drop in crime rates, The United States still has the world’s largest prison population. People of color are the most affected by the nation’s “tough on crime” policies. These enforcement strategies usually target street-level drug dealers and users from low-income, predominately minority, urban areas resulting in higher arrest rates for people of color.

While African-Americans and Latinos make up about 25% of the New York State population, they represent 83% of the people in its prisons and a startling 92% of the people in New York City’s jails. There are now more Blacks and Latinos in New York’s prisons than there are in the state’s universities.

The report recommends repealing the Rockefeller Drug Laws, increasing funding to treatment programs (which are less costly than jail), and increasing funding for public colleges. The report concludes: “The high cost of incarcerating petty drug offenders puts a heavy strain on the state’s resources which would be better spent on keeping CUNY a viable, well-funded and accessible institution.”

See the entire report online at the Justice Policy Institute’s website, under the “Clearinghouse” section.