• by Maite Ventura Oloriz (new york)
• Monday, August 10, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Before making the biggest mistake of his life, Anthony Papa lived a normal life with his wife and seven-year-old daughter, working in his own radio repair shop in the Bronx. He’d never gotten into any trouble with the law and took pleasure in simple things, like bowling.

In 1984, his whole life changed when one of the guys on his bowling team offered him some ‘easy money’ in exchange for delivering an envelope with cocaine to the neighbouring town of Mount Vernon, Westchester County. At first, he turned him down, but as the man insisted, Papa saw a way out of his debts and finally agreed.

When he arrived at the place where he was to deliver the drugs, Papa realised that his bowling buddy was actually an informant working for the narcotics police, and that he was walking into a routine drug sting.

Twenty police officers were waiting to arrest him for possession and distribution of four and a half ounces (127 grams) of cocaine, a small amount but enough to be considered a felony under New York laws and to put him in jail for 15 years.

In 1973, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller promoted the enactment of a set of stringent anti-drug laws - that have since become known as the ‘Rockefeller Drug Laws’ - which would radically change the lives of thousands of people in New York, especially in the black and Latino communities.

The laws established mandatory minimum sentences for possession and sale of controlled substances, even for non-violent and low-level first offenders like Papa.

A conviction for selling two ounces (56 grams) of heroin, morphine, opium, cocaine or cannabis or for possession of four ounces (113 grams) of any of these substances carried the same penalty as that imposed for second-degree murder: 15 years to life.

Rockefeller, a businessman, philanthropist and member of the Republican Party, served as governor of New York State from 1959 to 1973, and during his last year in office, he pushed these strict drug laws through the state legislature in an effort to combat what was seen as a drug abuse epidemic.

At the time, the streets of New York were besieged by crime and violence and plagued by heroin and other narcotics, and the idea was to isolate users and deter criminals through threats of extreme punishment.

While the declared aim of the Rockefeller drug laws was to bring down the drug kingpins and solve the drug epidemic, they have proved ineffective on both counts, doing nothing more than expand the prison industrial complex.

Soon after their introduction, New York’s drug laws were emulated by other states, as the country embraced the concept of the 'war on drugs', which has permeated international narcotics laws, with significant political, military and social repercussions across the Americas.

According to critics, the most severe effect of these laws is that they meant that judges could no longer exercise discretion in their sentencing, as they forced them to apply penalties based exclusively on the amount of drug involved, without considering mitigating factors, the offender’s role in the crime or the circumstances in which it was committed. It was no longer relevant, for example, if the person had a prior criminal record or not.

With extenuating circumstances no longer taken into account, the only way to obtain a lighter sentence was to cooperate with investigations, an option only available to those more deeply involved in criminal organisations, as they have more valuable information to give the police. This means that sentences are longer for small time dealers and for addicts who only turn to dealing to get their next fix.

After 36 years of harsh sentencing in narcotics cases, there are some 15,000 New Yorkers in maximum-security prisons for drug offences and no significant reduction in drug addiction or dealing in the state, according to Real Reform New York, an organisation that advocates for major reform of the Rockefeller drug laws.

Blacks and Latinos are the most severely affected, representing 92 percent of all convictions under these laws.

Although drug abuse and dealing exist among all ethnic groups, there are 11 times more blacks and Latinos in jail for drug-related offences than there are white people.

The reason for this is that most of the arrests are made in poor, inner-city areas, where these minorities live. 'This happens even though white people use more or less the same amount of drugs as black people,' Papa said.

Many critics attribute this to a deliberate police strategy. 'The police prefer to have prisons filled with non-violent drug offenders,' Papa claimed.

In 2004, the laws were revised and a few timid amendments were made, reducing the terms of some penalties, but basically leaving the laws unchanged.

This year, on Apr. 24, Governor David Paterson, of the Democratic Party, signed a bill that introduced broad modifications, most significantly restoring judicial discretion by allowing judges to consider the offender’s degree of involvement in the crime and grant alternatives to incarceration, such as rehabilitation programmes.

However, the campaign for deeper reform of the Rockefeller drug laws continues and there are several proposals currently being considered.

'We need further reform to get people who have received long sentences for non-violent crimes out of jail,' Papa said.

In the United States 'there are more than half a million people in this situation, and many of them need treatment instead of being locked up in a cell,' he added.

Papa was sentenced to 15 years in Sing Sing, a maximum-security prison in Ossining, New York. 'It was a living nightmare,' he remembered. 'I didn’t know what I was going to do to survive in there, and then the negativity of jail life led me to discover the art of painting.'

In 1994, seven years after completing his first original painting - a self-portrait called '15 to life' - his art was exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art, and his story began receiving tremendous exposure in the media, with New York Governor George Pataki (1995-2006) ultimately taking an interest in his case and granting him early release in late 1996.

After spending 12 long years in jail, Papa was finally free. But rebuilding his life in the outside world was not as easy as he thought it would be. 'When I got out, I didn’t know what to do with my life. So I started speaking at universities, to young people, and I became an activist,' he said.

'We began organising and formed a street movement to exert public pressure, change constituents’ views and convince politicians to reform the law,' he said.

After experiencing life in jail and the consequences of an ‘unjust’ system, he has focused all his efforts on fighting against such draconian anti-narcotic laws.

In 1988, Papa co-funded the grassroots organisation Mothers of the New York Disappeared, an advocacy group comprised mostly of family members of those imprisoned by the Rockefeller drug laws (modelled after the Argentine human rights movement Madres de Plaza de Mayo), which 'calls public attention to the virtual disappearance of drug war prisoners into the hidden confines of the United States prison industrial complex.'

Today, he works as a communications specialist for the non-governmental Drug Policy Alliance Network.

He has also written a memoir, entitled '15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom' and published in 2004, which is currently being made into a movie by filmmaker Brian Swibel.

'I hope it will become a major film that denounces the war on drugs and serves as a wake-up call to reform these laws,' Papa said.

Many politicians have also taken a position on the war on drugs. Jim Webb, a senator for Virginia who has been pushing for reform for years, claims that not only are changes urgently needed, but the tens of thousands of people serving long prison sentences for non-violent crimes have meant that the U.S. 'criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace.'

On the other hand, New York Senator Dale Volker says the proposed reform of the Rockefeller drug laws would allow convicted drug addicts to get jobs working with children and senior citizens.

'This feel-good legislation will now allow drug addicts to apply to be teachers, doctors, foster parents, child-care workers, nursing home aides, and firefighters, since their backgrounds will now be sealed from their potential employer,' he said last May.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service