Politics, Punishment, and Treatment

We are passing laws on penalty, but we are not dealing with treatment.

—Spokesman for Eliot D. Hawkins, Community Service Society of New York

I’m being treated like an animal in a locked cage.

—Voluntary Patient, Narcotic Addiction Control Commission

Two weeks after Rockefeller’s long-awaited anti-narcotics initiative began in April 1967, ten “inmates” escaped from a treatment facility.⁸ It was an inauspicious beginning—although a fitting representation—of what was to come of the first phase of Rockefeller’s “all-out war on crime and narcotics addiction.”⁹ Rockefeller advocated for the founding of the NACC as a new state agency that would offer treatment to people with illegal narcotics addiction, whether they wanted it or not. To some extent, there was a humanitarian logic behind the endeavor, but the state’s desire to lock up a problematic populace often overrode what was left of the therapeutic approach to drug treatment of the early 1960s.¹⁰ The NACC, devised by Rockefeller during a campaign year, was intended to address drug addiction in a way that would not offend voters and factions in the state that were looking to punish or, at the very least, remove people with illegal narcotics addiction from the streets. In the six years that the program was the cornerstone of Rockefeller’s anti-narcotics operation, it suffered from poor planning and mismanagement that resulted in severe budget cuts—the legislature began cutting its funding in 1971—but the program was always hobbled by its conflicted mission as part treatment initiative and part warehouse for people with illegal narcotics addiction. Even if the NACC had been operated by seasoned clinicians or did not use repurposed prisons as treatment facilities, it is unclear if it could have been successful under the pressure of high expectations, tightening budgets, and a desire to punish people with illegal narcotics addiction who were often described as predators rather than victims or patients.¹¹

The NACC’s first year proved that its conflicting mandate to both treat and punish was unsustainable and that its management undermined its ability to provide a treatment-based solution. NACC facilities, for example, looked much like prisons. They were especially undesirable for people with illegal narcotics addiction who were civilly committed. When a person volunteered to enter treatment in court, they were led away in handcuffs and could then look forward to weeks and months spent in cells under the supervision of former prison guards who patrolled the halls, riot sticks in hand. Initially, handcuffs were not used at the courthouse, but the use of restraints became standard procedure after a large number of people attempted to escape when they were transported from the courthouse to a treatment facility. When people with illegal narcotics addiction did attend group therapy sessions, they were treated, by and large, by recent college graduates who had little to no experience or special training as counselors. In 1969, the first NACC commissioner, Lawrence W. Pierce, admitted that counselor training was ineffective during the first year and that counselors were unsure what to do during the first six months of employment. Although he said the system had improved, 35 percent of the counseling staff were still at the trainee level in 1969.¹² Two years later, Richard Severo of the New York Times reported that the impetus of the NACC was to “get the addicts off the streets, so that they could not prey on the residents of their neighborhoods.”¹³ His point spoke to the opposing motivations of a fight against narcotics that did little to draw a distinction between waging a war against drug dealers or people with illegal narcotics addiction. Leaders of the NACC, including Pierce (1966–1970), Milton Luger (1970–1971), and Howard Jones (1971–1973) did express a desire to treat people with illegal narcotics addiction in residential and outpatient settings. However, the agency was hindered by a desire to punish people who, once they were labeled “addicts,” were deemed to be separate from, and even enemies of, the communities they may have lived in their entire lives.¹⁴ James A. Inciardi, a professor of criminal justice who early in his career served as an associate director of research for the NACC, minced no words when he wrote that the agency’s treatment facility “was likely the most notorious drug-abuse-treatment disaster of all time.” According to Inciardi, the NACC was unlikely to succeed not because compulsory treatment was an unsound approach but because of a range of problems caused by political expediency and logistical shortcomings.¹⁵

In response to growing criticism, the NACC began to embrace a wider range of treatment options, but the change failed to improve the agency’s record of “curing addicts” or even removing them from the streets. The NACC made a major shift in 1970 from focusing on managing its own treatment facilities to becoming a granting agency that funded private and public treatment centers. It also moved away from a long-term residential model to an emphasis on outpatient care and shifted funding from drug-free programs to methadone maintenance. The latter change was due in part to support among Democratic legislators and the findings of the state senate committee on finance, which determined in 1969 that the NACC was a failure and its appropriations should be moved to methadone maintenance.¹⁶ In April 1971, the NACC announced that due to budget cuts, it would suspend indefinitely admission of people with illegal narcotics addiction to its treatment centers, phase out four treatment centers, lay off fifteen hundred of its four thousand employees, and eliminate five hundred unfilled positions.¹⁷ By the end of the year, ten treatment centers had been closed.¹⁸ In the summer of 1972, it was reported that 30 percent of the people who had been admitted for care to the NACC had outstanding warrants because they had either escaped residential facilities or failed to show up for aftercare programs. Of the 6,600 people who were missing, 250 escaped from residential facilities. Meanwhile, less than 2 percent of the people treated had been convicted of felonies or misdemeanors.¹⁹ After five years of operation, the NACC was said to be in “chaos.” Regardless of whether the treatment provided by the NACC was effective, it was clear that it attended to very few of the people with illegal narcotics addiction convicted of crimes that much of the public expected it to address.

Although the NACC’s administrators believed it was more successful as a treatment-centric funding agency, the change angered those who expected the NACC to punish a community associated with crime. By 1972, the NACC had largely moved away from the commitment of people with illegal narcotics addiction in favor of public and private community-based programs. Although not its original function, the NACC had become an influential source of funding for treatment centers in New York City, for example. In 1971, the NACC provided more than two-thirds, or $58.5 million of the $86 million, the city spent on treatment programs compared to the city and federal governments that contributed $13.5 million and $14 million, respectively.²⁰ Some critics complained that the commission had “discredited compulsory commitment as a rehabilitative tool without having really tried it.” Meanwhile, Howard Jones, who assumed leadership of the NACC in 1971, said the public and judges had always misunderstood the mandate of the NACC, which he said, “was not to serve as an adjunct to the criminal justice system but to wean addicts from their addiction.” He went on to insist that “we are not in the business of incarcerating people.” Amid reports that 6,779 of the 21,600 people with illegal narcotics addiction committed to the state’s “closed” system had escaped from residential treatment facilities and aftercare parole. The New York Times reported that parole officers and judges had lost faith in the NACC’s interest or ability in locating those people, and as a result, judges were “reluctant to send criminal addicts to the commission instead of to prison because of what they consider its sieve-like retention ability.”²¹ Part of the problem appeared to be that judges had hoped to use the NACC as an alternative to traditional incarceration, but Jones and the NACC were moving away from providing long-term commitment. The NACC, however, had always been ill-equipped to provide close supervision to the large number of people enrolled in aftercare centers and lacked the authority to arrest a client in the community who failed to meet the requirements of the program. It had armed law enforcement agents, for example, but they were few in number and often unavailable.²²

In the fall of 1972, researchers at Fordham University’s Institute for Social Research concluded that Rockefeller embraced compulsory confinement—an expensive and complicated program—because it would appeal to his constituents who were concerned about rising crime rates. The report, which was an internal document produced for the Horizon Project, a Lower East Side drug treatment program under the auspices of New York City’s Addiction Services Agency, provided insight into the subsequent conflicts experienced by the NACC as it sought to deter crime and treat people with illegal narcotics addiction. With an election year approaching in 1966, the report determined that Rockefeller knew he needed a new narcotics program to offer the electorate and his opponents were coalescing around two options: methadone maintenance or compulsory commitment. With the former program being relatively new and unproven to serve as a crime deterrent, Rockefeller chose the latter, an “easily understood … program to remove addicts from the streets and to confine them in State institutions.” Rockefeller, the researchers concluded, was aware that this approach would appeal to people who associated addiction with crimes such as theft—the police department had been collecting such data—and would support the removal of people with illegal narcotics addiction as a crime deterrent. Although it would be far more complex to confine people with illegal narcotics addiction rather than provide outpatient methadone treatment, the straightforward logic of the idea to remove people with illegal narcotics addiction from the street and rehabilitate them in the process was “quite popular with many voters” and therefore advantageous for Rockefeller. Predictably, what resulted was an agency that functioned best as a politically appealing concept rather than a mechanism for the impossible task of curing people with illegal narcotics addiction as a means to lower crime—a still-unproven correlation.²³ Ultimately, the report’s findings were apt; at the time of its publication, Rockefeller was again searching for a politically beneficial response to the drug issue in New York. In the final months of 1972, an undeterred Rockefeller devised a plan that again prioritized public sentiment to shake up the war on narcotics as he did seven years before. This time, the answer would be simpler—and more punitive—than ever. Rather than invest in an agency tasked with the removal of “criminal addicts” under the guise of treatment, Rockefeller called for the lifetime incarceration of all people with illegal narcotics addiction and dealers. The ramifications of this decision, however, would be more consequential than any failures committed by the NACC’s brief foray into confinement.

Welfare Reform as Punishment, 1971–1972

Rockefeller’s final term as governor became a new opportunity to intensify his focus on welfare reform, not only as a cost savings for the state’s strained finances but also as a means of penalizing welfare recipients. Rockefeller attributed increased welfare spending on misdeeds committed by welfare recipients and the flawed system that harbored them. Gone was the advocate of welfare, who in 1964, filmed a campaign advertisement where he insisted that welfare recipients wanted to “earn their own way.”²⁴ The governor’s punitive approach to welfare was well suited to an era when many New Yorkers, including those in the press, were intensely suspicious of and hostile toward increased welfare expenditures. Labor reports from early 1971 found that the nation’s unemployment rate had reached a nine-year high of 6 percent, while New York City’s unemployment rate increased from 3.3 percent in 1969 to 4.6 percent in 1970.²⁵ Days before Rockefeller’s State of the State Address, New York City’s welfare system made national headlines after reporters received a tip that a family of five were living in the Waldorf-Astoria, care of the city. The family was then hustled out of the hotel as photographers documented the move, furthering the impression that increased welfare spending was due to mismanagement and manipulation. News that a family on public assistance was luxuriating in the exclusive hotel produced ire from Mayor Lindsay who accused welfare workers of placing the family there with “malicious intent.” Sardonic comments from journalists such as one at New York Magazine who wrote that the welfare mother “thought maid service was lousy on Park Avenue” intensified the public’s antipathy. Popular opinion was that New York City was overrun with lazy and dishonest Black and Hispanic welfare recipients who opted to live off the government rather than support themselves and misguided relief workers who abetted them.

The story of Cleola Hainsworth and her children spending two nights in the Waldorf-Astoria fueled the idea that public welfare was nothing more than a racket making the program an appealing target for cuts. The sensational story received far more attention than the common practice of families being crammed into what became known as welfare hotels when their apartments were deemed uninhabitable due to fire or code violations. Rather than stay in the $70-a-night Manhattan hotel, families often found themselves in hotels with nearly bare rooms, sometimes without bathrooms or heat, and generally run-down and sometimes rat-infested surroundings at an average cost of $4.50 per person. Before moving to the Waldorf-Astoria, the family had stayed in a Brooklyn hotel for $23 a night, but they had to leave when out-of-town guests arrived at the hotel. Before receiving national press, Hainsworth and her children had been repeatedly moved for three months after her previous apartment building was found to be too deteriorated for inhabitance. A year before the Hainsworth story, the New York Times reported that eleven hundred welfare families were residing in hotels that were described as “notorious sore spots” and “hellholes” by Lindsay and Congressman Edward Koch.²⁶ In this milieu, Rockefeller considered proposals such as the strict enforcement of housing and health laws that could have the same effect as a residency requirement, and the enforcement of a previously unenforced 1969 law that would disqualify welfare recipients from receiving aid if they refused a job offered by a state-mandated job placement agency. Sources from the administration told the press on March 9 that Rockefeller remained concerned about the truly needy, but he was troubled that welfare costs had quadrupled in the past twelve years and showed no sign of slowing. He credited the increase to migration of poor southerners to New York and welfare recipients manipulating the system rather than long-standing economic need in New York.²⁷

Rockefeller’s embrace of residency and work requirements was a sharp break from his first years in office; he was now more likely to contribute to, rather than remedy, the “factual malnutrition” the Moreland Commission identified in 1963. On March 15, 1971, Rockefeller announced that welfare in New York needed reform because of three significant changes over the past decade. First, New York had become a destination for southerners who came to find work but stayed for the welfare benefits. Second, welfare recipients had learned to manipulate the welfare laws. Rockefeller sometimes claimed that welfare recipients came to New York expressly for welfare benefits. During a 1969 town meeting in Rome-Utica, New York, for example, Rockefeller claimed that the state of Mississippi sent a family of eleven or twelve to New York to “get them off what little pittance they give them down there and to get on our welfare rolls.”²⁸ Third and finally, the absence of work incentives discouraged people from leaving the rolls. When a reporter noted that in the past year, the number of welfare recipients in Westchester County increased 23 percent, but only 3 percent of those people were new to the community, Rockefeller refused to concede that it was unlikely that outsiders were unfairly burdening the system. Rockefeller mentioned a variety of possible solutions such as permanently removing welfare recipients from the rolls if they did not report twice weekly to the employment office and instituting after-school and summer jobs for young people because “the bulk of the welfare roll is—70 percent—aid to dependent children.” Off the record, Rockefeller told a reporter that his new approach was “the start of a move to get tough” in distinguishing “between those who really need [welfare], and those who enjoy it.” Although the governor admitted that he did not have all of the answers, Rockefeller insisted that his proposals were justified because welfare threatened to destroy the fabric of the state’s cities and would spread to the suburbs. He never acknowledged that despite his efforts, the state was unable to address the larger structural issues that contributed to poverty. Instead, he conjured bad actors who overburdened the system.²⁹

Rockefeller’s plans further alienated and angered many minorities, including the middle-class African Americans who had supported him in the past. Rockefeller’s longtime supporter Jackie Robinson, who had backed Rockefeller’s 1970 reelection campaign, wrote a letter that he initially intended to be published in the New York Post but instead sent to Rockefeller privately to share his disappointment:

As much as I believe in Governor Rockefeller, as much respect and admiration as I have for him, I don’t agree we should support his welfare proposals without making sure that he is taking into account the facts. Most people on welfare would be happy to get off if there were jobs that would enable them to support their families. Blacks and Puerto Ricans on welfare are unskilled, as are other welfare recipients, because in more cases they had been denied the opportunity to get a skill.… Cutting back on welfare only indicates that we are not truly concerned about the needy. If we do it without another program, the problems confronting us will become much greater.³⁰

The letter, sent three days after his press conference when he relied on dubious claims to defend his efforts to cut welfare, did not persuade Rockefeller to change his mind. Robinson was not alone; after Rockefeller successfully led the effort to cut welfare benefits in 1969, the New York State Conference of the NAACP requested the governor call a special session of the legislature to restore cuts to welfare during its annual convention in October. Donald Lee, the president of the New York chapters—he and the vice president, Paul Redd, had recently walked 165 miles from New York City to Albany to protest the welfare cuts—criticized the cuts that required people to live on sixty cents a day and instead endorsed a negative income tax. In 1971, the NAACP, joined by the Urban League and SCLC, announced a new plan intended to persuade the legislature to restore that year’s cuts to the “already inadequate funds for vitally necessary programs” by lobbying individual Republican legislators in Albany and conducting a letter-writing campaign. Both years, the NAACP organized protests in Albany.³¹ Rockefeller had long-standing ties to civil rights activists and had worked hard to appeal to higher income African Americans in particular, but that was not enough to deter him from what had become a winning strategy.

On March 27, Rockefeller formally recommended to the state legislature “a complete reorganization, conceptually and structurally, of the welfare program for New York State” that included ideas he had rejected previously as too extreme.³² His proposals included a controversial (and possibly unconstitutional) year-long residency requirement, a voluntary resettlement program to help recipients move to states where jobs and housing were available, and work incentives that included suspending local social services districts’ authority to declare an individual unfit for employment. Rockefeller had vetoed a similar residency law in 1960. In 1969, the US Supreme Court ruled in Shapiro v. Thompson that residency requirements for welfare recipients were unconstitutional unless the state had a “compelling state interest.”³³ Although his legal counsel advised against a residency requirement, Rockefeller hoped to meet the court’s “compelling state interest” requirement by declaring a five-year fiscal emergency. Rockefeller claimed that in-migration was a major factor in the state’s fiscal crisis, but only 11,000 of the state’s 1.6 million residents who received welfare at the end of 1970 had lived in the state less than a year.³⁴ In addition to new rules intended to weed out recipients, Rockefeller proposed a reduction in the annual level of aid from $4,000 for a family of four to $2,400 unless the recipients were aged, blind, disabled, or unable to work; as needed, recipients could increase their benefits by working. Such a cut would be a major blow to welfare recipients: the State Board of Social Welfare had requested a 7.2 percent increase in benefits—the equivalent of $51 a year per person—to meet rising costs of living.³⁵ While Rockefeller announced his proposed welfare reductions, the Republican legislative leaders proposed their own plan to cut $141 million from welfare spending for the coming year. This proposed cut targeted New York City, which would lose $100 million from its budget. As significant as this proposed cut was, however, this reduction was smaller than the previous plan to cut 12 percent from all recipients’ welfare payments.³⁶

The final draft of the state’s welfare reforms was based on the unproven premise that welfare recipients chose state aid over work out of laziness. The state legislature passed, and Rockefeller signed, ten bills including a public works mandate or work incentive program that passed 110 to 33. The Republicans were unanimous in their support, but the Democrats were split 31 in favor and 33 against the bill that required employable adults on home relief or dependent-family aid to accept public works jobs to earn the amount of their relief payment. The bill included a stipulation that the worker could earn no more than the amount of his or her welfare check.³⁷ As part of its “Incentives for Independence” program, the state proposed a “brownie point” plan for West Harlem and Rockland and Franklin Counties, wherein welfare recipients’ payments would be cut and they would be encouraged to earn the benefits back if they adopted behaviors deemed constructive by the state. Earlier in the week, Rockefeller had held a press conference during which he explained that an incentives program would make it possible for a mother on welfare to earn $5 of her benefits that were cut if her child went to school. He also said he wanted to train the children to work three hours on Saturdays to gain “work habits.” His conclusion, “Why should we have a million 600 thousand people on welfare and have filthy cities with the kids having nothing to do?”³⁸ This proposal in particular drew great criticism from minorities, union leaders, and numerous organizations. Stephen Hill, president of Social Service Employees Union Local 371, called the plan “vicious, racist and inhumane” and said it could incite “violence in the street” because poverty in those areas was already extreme.³⁹ Jeanette Washington of the National Welfare Rights Organization called Rockefeller “the slavemaster of New York State.”⁴⁰ Although Rockefeller had to abandon the program in November 1971 after it was rejected by the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the state began requiring recipients to report to employment offices and accept jobs or training when they were offered to remain eligible for welfare as part of the work incentive program.⁴¹ Robert Carroll, deputy administrator of public affairs for New York City’s welfare department, criticized the work incentive or work relief program because the jobs assigned to welfare recipients rarely paid enough to get a person off welfare and did not reduce welfare expenditures. He was also critical of George F. Berlinger, Rockefeller’s first state-appointed welfare inspector general, who made “unsubstantiated charges which [were] designed to cast suspicion and doubt on the poor.” Carroll, who called Berlinger “an enemy of poor people,” also noted that even though the inspector general decried welfare fraud and said permissive welfare officials disregarded fraud, he produced no evidence of recipients cheating the system.⁴²

The following February, Abraham Ribicoff, the Democratic senator from Connecticut and Senate Finance Committee member, accused Rockefeller of spreading inaccuracies about welfare recipients. During a committee hearing, Ribicoff and Rockefeller agreed that national standards were needed, but the senator accused Rockefeller of misleading the nation on the welfare issue. After a contentious exchange, Rockefeller admitted that a six-month investigation of the state’s 1.7 million people on welfare found only 152 cases of fraud of which 21 were referred to the district attorney.⁴³ Ribicoff admonished Rockefeller that the nation was embroiled in a “bitter debate” over welfare and that spreading myths such as Rockefeller’s claim that 20 percent of welfare recipients were on the rolls fraudulently harmed welfare recipients.⁴⁴ Despite evidence to the contrary, Rockefeller’s efforts received considerable mainstream acclaim. In the fall of 1972, the New York Times declared welfare reform a success because welfare recipients were being put to work, which could “entice potential workers out of the welfare psychology.” The program was also deemed a success because the city was hiring people that they would need to support anyway during its hiring freeze and found that employers were “pleasantly surprised that welfare recipients can do good work.” Ira Glasser of the New York Civil Liberties Union, however, criticized the program arguing that it forced welfare recipients into a system of peonage where they had to work alongside city workers for less than half the pay and without union benefits. Glasser also noted that the city and the New York Times “reinforced the myth” that welfare recipients were unwilling to work rather than unable to find work to support themselves in a city that had lost ninety-four thousand jobs, while the state’s unemployment rate remained at 6 percent.⁴⁵

The welfare reforms supported by Rockefeller largely failed to employ welfare recipients or save the state money, but they were successful at harming an already stigmatized community. One year after the reforms went into effect, Jule Sugarman, human resource administrator commissioner, reported that of the recipients who were assigned jobs, one-third of clients received jobs that lasted one week, while two-thirds worked jobs that lasted ten weeks or less. Job training offered little relief; despite a 96 percent increase in registrants, there was a 14 percent drop in training placement. The program did result, however, in the removal of 50,030 people from the rolls for noncompliance. In 1973, the state found that the number of ineligibles—people who received welfare despite being unqualified—had risen to 17 percent from 11 percent six months earlier. Abe Lavine, state commissioner of social services, explained that the increase was likely due to “more sophisticated audit techniques” rather than an increase in fraud. The state had begun, for example, to focus more attention on rooting out fathers who continued to live with their families, while the state provided support. The state found that 40 percent of the households deemed ineligible for Aid to Families with Dependent Children were disqualified because there was a man living in the house who could presumably provide support to the family. To combat this trend, the state planned to begin refusing welfare support to “high risk” applicants, meaning women who could not provide documentation such as a death certificate, divorce or separation agreement, or proof of incarceration or enlistment in the armed services for the father of their children.⁴⁶ The reforms, which were never expected to reduce the state budget more than a fraction, had two immediate consequences: they made life more grueling for a significant number of New York’s most vulnerable citizens, mothers and children in particular, and facilitated Rockefeller’s efforts to rebrand himself as tough on welfare.

Drug Laws as Public Relations

Six years after Rockefeller proposed compulsory treatment as the cornerstone of his war on narcotics, there were signs he was in search of a more decisive strategy that would reaffirm his commitment to crime control. In March 1972, Rockefeller’s speechwriter and adviser Hugh Morrow sent the governor a memo telling him to stop referring to the NACC as a failure because the press was capitalizing on it.⁴⁷ Rockefeller, however, was ready to move on from the agency that had failed to remove people with illegal narcotics addiction from the streets. The NACC had received the disproportionate focus of Rockefeller’s effort to reduce drug use, but it was part of a twofold fight against narcotics that also included longer sentences for drug dealers. In 1966, Rockefeller signed a bill into law that increased minimum sentences for people convicted of narcotics possession with intent to sell from five years to seven. Drug dealers who were convicted of selling drugs to people under the age of twenty-one would receive a minimum sentence of ten years in jail, up from seven years, and a maximum of twenty years, up from fifteen years. Those convicted of selling narcotics to people over the age of twenty-one would receive a minimum sentence of seven years, an increase from five years.⁴⁸ Rockefeller had assured the public that he planned to rehabilitate people with illegal narcotics addiction, but his interest in combatting crime with incarceration—for drug dealers and users, an often-blurred distinction—was always central to his plan. His new approach would further deemphasize treating drug users in favor of a plan that prioritized long sentences for anyone found with illegal narcotics.

At the start of 1973, Rockefeller announced a plan to reduce the use and trade of illegal narcotics with a sweeping plan centered on lifetime prison sentences and the removal of discretionary power from judges and juries whom he blamed for not imposing the longer sentences he had called for previously. In his annual message to the legislature on January 3, 1973, Rockefeller explained that the state’s law-abiding citizens were terrorized by a “reign of fear” caused by crime and human destruction bred by narcotics addiction. With that in mind, he proposed a program to combat addiction, courts that were slow to bring justice, corruption in law enforcement, and a “revolving-door criminal justice system.” Rockefeller admitted that his previous drug programs that had focused on the rehabilitation of people with illegal narcotics addiction had failed and that it was now time to deter the “pushing of the broad spectrum of hard drugs,” which included heroin, amphetamines, LSD, hashish, and “other dangerous drugs.” His admission, however, did not acknowledge the flaws in the NACC that had hindered its ability to treat people effectively.⁴⁹ The cornerstone of Rockefeller’s new plan was mandatory life imprisonment for all drug pushers aged nineteen and older without exception. Rockefeller planned to strip judges and juries of all discretionary power and forbid pleas for lesser charges, probation, parole, and suspension of sentences. In this effort to deter the sale and use of drugs through intensified penalties, the governor also called for life sentences for people with illegal narcotics addiction who committed murder, assault, burglary, robbery, rape, and other violent offenses. He likewise sought the suspension of youthful offender laws that reduced sentences for teenagers between ages sixteen and nineteen involved in illegal trafficking, although they would be eligible for parole after fifteen years of imprisonment. Finally, he proposed an incentive program that would pay $1,000 for information leading to the conviction of drug dealers, a 100 percent tax on all money earned and the seizure of all property gained from illegal trafficking, and an expansion of the NACC’s commitment capabilities. Rather than focus on people with illegal narcotics addiction as he did in 1966, Rockefeller’s new proposal was a broader plan that targeted those who participated in the use of illegal narcotics in addition to the criminal justice system, which he said had failed to reduce crime use because of widespread corruption.⁵⁰ Rockefeller’s plan would appeal to voters who believed the criminal justice system had become too lenient because of liberal judges in particular, but it did not align with recent findings of experts who concluded that law enforcement was unlikely to reduce drug use in the United States because of the magnitude of a robust drug supply, not corruption or a failure to punish. The previous July, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State, for example, concluded that there was no chance of stemming the flow of drugs from Southeast Asia “under any conditions that can be realistically projected.”⁵¹

Upon first learning of Rockefeller’s new plan, members of his inner circle were split between those who thought the proposal was too extreme and those who believed its severe nature could serve him well politically. The previous fall, Rockefeller had informed his staff that he wanted life sentences for drug dealers, no matter the quantity of drugs found in their possession. His staff responded with hesitancy and concern that such a proposal would be too drastic, impractical, and even illogical, but Rockefeller insisted that anyone who disagreed must not understand the seriousness of the problem. When Howard Jones, the chairman of the NACC, heard of the proposal, he expressed concern. Jones had led the state agency for a little over a year, but similar to his predecessors, he had a long career in criminal justice as a district attorney. He argued that courts would be unlikely to hand down such harsh sentences, that jails would soon be overcrowded, that dealers would recruit minors as carriers, and that there was no hope for rehabilitation for first-time offenders. Rockefeller listened in silence, however, and when Jones finished, Rockefeller asked dismissively, “Is that all?” Once Jones, who was African American, left, Rockefeller remarked, “He’s just worried about his people.” According to Rockefeller’s speechwriter Joseph Persico, “his people” was a reference to the Black community. Jones was not alone in his concerns; Rockefeller’s counsel Michael Whiteman also argued that the law needed to provide some leeway for young and first-time offenders. When Whiteman first told legislators Rockefeller’s plan, they shared in his original shock and some remarked sarcastically, “What’s he sending up next? Death for overtime parking?”⁵² Rockefeller, however, was not deterred, and some of his advisers encouraged him not to address critics to strengthen his position. Morrow and Ron Maiorana told him to ignore the New York Times and other critics because his current position on drug reform made him appear “tough, righteously indignant, and resolute”; if he responded to criticism, he would appear “quarrelsome” and “defensive.” Rockefeller should instead focus on action, not “further rhetoric or explanation … to get as much of [his] program passed as possible.”⁵³

Rockefeller’s drug proposal rejected the latest findings about drug addiction or research on the drug trade in favor of popular lore and suggestions from friends and family that would appeal to a frustrated public. In an article published in the spring of 1973, Rockefeller—described as being rejuvenated by Nixon’s reelection—was said to have been motivated to propose a “radical cure” for the state’s drug problem because of public concern and his interest in a fifth term in office and a bid for the 1976 presidential election. The cure was not inspired by the latest findings of experts; rather, it was imported from Japan by way of a New York businessman who was interested in the topic because his son suffered from drug addiction. Rockefeller explained that his proposal for life sentences was based on the tough drug laws in Japan, which he learned of after a friend of his went to Japan to understand why the nation had low rates of drug use. Meanwhile, he said his high school—and college-age stepchildren proffered the idea to put $1,000 bounties on pushers and increase sentences for youthful offenders. Persico described the origins of the law as “something of a family affair, a neighborly improvisation without the deadening hand of oversophisticated professionals.”⁵⁴ Morrow recalled that despite the “very negative” reaction of Rockefeller’s staff, he was confident that the possibility of life in prison would deter “any kid who thought of getting involved with drugs.”⁵⁵ The process in which Rockefeller devised his plan suggested that it was designed to appeal to public perceptions rather than to implement proven interventions based on research or data.

Soon after Rockefeller announced his plan, an expert in criminal sentencing theory and philosophy of criminal law, who had advised Rockefeller during his 1968 campaign, shared his assessment of the plan with the Washington Post. Andrew von Hirsch, executive director of the Committee for the Study of Incarceration—a group that included people with a range of views but tended to be more liberal—concluded that tougher sentencing was likely to fail as a crime deterrent and would create greater disparities in the criminal justice system. The advocate for proportionate sentencing said increasing sentences and limiting plea bargaining and judicial discretion to streamline enforcement was more likely to increase discriminatory application at trial. Von Hirsch noted, “Juries simply won’t convict a good-looking college kid on a hash charge if it will mean an automatic life sentence. The people who will get it are the lower class.” He also expressed doubt that harsh penalties would deter criminal activity. Von Hirsch observed that “people are sensitive to the difference between say, zero time and six months, or between three weeks and three years,” but he did not believe the threat of a life sentence would influence someone who was not deterred by a thirty-year sentence. Von Hirsch, who believed current penalties were already “enormously severe—though unevenly applied,” concluded that harsh penalties were ineffective. Ultimately, von Hirsch’s observation that the unequal application of these laws would lead to enormous racial disparities would be proven correct.⁵⁶

The severity of Rockefeller’s proposal took many people by surprise, but it was a corrective in the minds of New Yorkers who believed drug crime convictions failed to produce appropriately long sentences. The New York City Police Department Narcotics Division reported that in 1971, for example, only 418, or 2 percent, of the 20,762 people who had been arrested for narcotics had gone to prison, up from 1 percent the previous year. In December 1971, the New York Times reported that in a study of felony drug sale arrests for a pound or more of heroin or cocaine in New York City only 3 percent of those convicted were jailed for the offense they were charged with, while 38.5 percent received a lesser charge, 28.9 percent were committed to a NACC facility, and 18.8 percent received probation. The State Investigation Commission found that between September 1972 and March 1973, no jail term had been imposed on over 59 percent of those sentenced for drug felonies. Meanwhile, a Republican-led joint legislative committee on crime drew attention to sentencing disparities by county—drug dealers caught in Brooklyn were sentenced to less time overall—but the study also found that due to plea bargaining, district attorneys and defense counsel had more influence on sentences than judges.⁵⁷ According to the New York City Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, the NACC had become a “plea-bargaining device” that was used to threaten defendants and cajole them to plead guilty to a criminal charge and go to jail for a shorter prison term. New York City district attorney Frank Hogan admitted that district attorneys rarely attempted to proceed with the commitment process after obtaining a criminal conviction.⁵⁸ These findings became public in a period when polling data showed that the public favored long sentences. In April 1970, a Gallup poll found that 24 percent of Americans supported life sentences for people convicted for the sale of heroin, while 43 percent favored sentences of ten years or more and 4 percent preferred the death penalty. Pollsters found that 26 percent favored jail terms of ten years or more for heroin users, which was more than double the 12 percent who favored medical treatment instead of imprisonment. The poll found that all respondents, except people in their twenties, preferred tougher sentencing.⁵⁹

Keenly aware of the public’s receptiveness to harsher sentencing and desire for a crackdown on crime, Rockefeller expressed hope that his proposals would be adopted nationwide. During a public appearance a couple of weeks after his initial announcement, Rockefeller said that if the new drug laws were as successful as he expected them to be, the entire nation should follow New York’s lead. In February 1973, Rockefeller received a poll of New York City residents—the overwhelming majority were Democrats—that revealed that his renewed attention to illegal narcotics was fitting with the times. The respondents identified “curbing drug abuse” as the second most important issue; the first was the related issue of “curbing crime in the streets.”⁶⁰ When Gallup pollsters asked respondents of a nationwide poll for their opinion of a governor’s recent proposal for “sellers of hard drugs such as heroin be given life imprisonment without the possibility of a parole,” 67 percent said they approved. The response was rather ubiquitous; 68 percent of men and 66 percent of women approved, while 68 percent of whites compared to 59 percent of nonwhites approved—nonwhites, however, had the lowest approval rating of those surveyed. The highest approval rating—73 percent—was found among people who lived in cities with populations larger than one million. Gallup attributed the consensus to the growing percentage of Americans who thought crime was the number one problem in the United States and a subsequent desire for “immediate solutions.”⁶¹ When asked what had caused the increase in crime, respondents’ top three reasons were “increased use of drugs,” “courts too lenient,” and “not enough police.”⁶² A few months after announcing his drug proposal, Rockefeller said he was seriously considering proposing the death penalty for convicted drug dealers involved in organized crime.⁶³ Amid growing support for punitive sentencing and dissatisfaction with the courts, Rockefeller positioned himself as a public figure with one of the severest stances against crime and illegal narcotics.

In an era when the public expressed great concern over rising drug use in the United States, politicians across the political spectrum embraced punitive responses to the sale and use of illegal narcotics. When Arthur Goldberg ran against Rockefeller in 1970, he pledged to take to the streets personally to conduct what sounded like a one-man crusade against drug trafficking.⁶⁴ In the weeks before the 1972 presidential election, Nixon proposed new crime legislation for the following year that would include strict mandatory sentences for first-time drug dealers, even harsher penalties for second-time offenders, and designating possession of heroin or cocaine as a felony. He argued that harsher mandatory sentences were needed to counteract “permissive” judges who gave drug dealers “light sentences.” George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, criticized “incompetent prosecutors” appointed by Nixon for the decline in conviction rates for narcotics violators, which had fallen precipitously in federal courts (79 percent in 1968 to 59 percent in 1971) during the Nixon administration.⁶⁵ Lindsay, who was highly critical of Rockefeller’s plan in 1973, offered his own reforms that extended narcotics sentences in addition to limiting plea bargaining and parole.⁶⁶

By 1973, it was commonplace for politicians—and public opinion polls—to advocate for more severe drug laws, but a wide range of critics denounced the severity of the governor’s latest proposal. Vocal critics ranged from groups such as the ACLU, New York Civil Liberties Union, Consumers Union, and New York State NAACP to groups that may have been less expected such as the New York State Conservative Party and the New York State District Attorneys Association, which had supported his call for increased sentences in 1966. Numerous public officials in New York City registered their disapproval. Benjamin Malcolm, who served as the city’s corrections commissioner, told television audiences that the proposal was unrealistic and could incite riots in city jails. The New York State Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Executive Committee voted 20 to 10 to oppose the recommendations, while many Republican legislators said there should have been a distinction made between “addict-pushers” and “non-addict-pushers.”⁶⁷ Many of Rockefeller’s critics testified during a monthlong series of hearings presided over by the senate and assembly codes committees. As the weeks passed, the hearings, which began with an unusual appearance from the governor, revealed that most of the governor’s critics agreed that tougher laws were needed, but they were most critical of the proposals to eliminate plea bargaining and to make no distinction between minor and major drug dealers. Representatives from the District Attorneys Association, for example, said plea bargaining was essential for convincing low-level pushers to inform on suppliers.⁶⁸ The New York Times and Washington Post were the newspapers that published the most negative opposition to Rockefeller’s plan, but a significant number of New York papers supported Rockefeller’s proposal. Out of a list of twenty-seven newspapers compiled by Rockefeller’s staff, twelve were identified as “generally positive” and six were “strongly positive.” All of the supportive papers were based in New York, including the Albany Knickerbocker News, Binghamton Press, New York Daily News, and Rochester-Times. Whereas eighteen periodicals supported Rockefeller, the Christian Science Monitor, Buffalo Evening News, New York Post, and Niagara Falls Gazette were categorized as “mildly negative,” while Newsday, the Oneonta Star, and Ogdensburg Journal were identified as “neutral.” Notably, neither the New York Amsterdam News, who had endorsed Rockefeller in the past, nor any other Black publication was mentioned in the assessment.⁶⁹

Despite initial expressions of disbelief and criticism that Rockefeller’s new drug laws were impractical and unworkable, a majority of state legislators fell in line once Rockefeller made relatively minor revisions to his proposal. Suburban communities, particularly those in Westchester County, were in favor of the laws. Rockefeller reported that the letters he received regarding his proposed drug laws were favorable by a margin of 10 to 1. Observers reasoned that the public’s support for a more punitive justice system stemmed from frustration and a desire to find a quick solution to “the scourge of the seventies.”⁷⁰ On April 12, 1973, Rockefeller reversed his initial refusal to compromise and revised the plan to modify some of the penalties for drug dealers. The state senate passed the legislation on April 27 by a vote of 41 to 14. On May 3, the assembly approved an amended version of the bill by a vote of 80 to 65—the minority Democrats dissented en masse—and on May 7, the senate passed the amended bill.⁷¹ In response to the senate vote, the ACLU reiterated its opposition and called the bill “one of the most ignorant, irresponsible and inhumane acts in the history of the state.”⁷² Unfazed by the criticism of district attorneys, judges, civil libertarians, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and Lindsay, Rockefeller claimed that if the law failed, it would be the fault of his critics in the judicial system who did not enforce it “vigorously and effectively.”⁷³ Despite the objections of almost everyone familiar with penology and criminal justice, on May 8, 1973, Rockefeller signed into law the legislation that had become the centerpiece of his last legislative program. The final law did include amendments such as sentencing distinctions that the governor first refused to consider. For example, a first-time offender caught distributing a small quantity of a drug would be liable to a Class D felony and a maximum of seven years in prison. Calls for this amendment were the most popular during the legislative debates; numerous legislators discussed a need to save the hypothetical dieting housewife who was caught giving a friend a diet pill that contained amphetamines. The new law also made a drug dealer who gave evidence for the prosecution eligible for life probation without a mandatory prison sentence. Hashish, a concentrated version of marijuana, was also removed from the list of applicable drugs. These changes convinced numerous Republican legislators to support the bill.⁷⁴ Rockefeller could now boast that New York State had the nation’s toughest antidrug laws.

A “Chaotic Criminal Justice System”

Before he called for extended sentences for drug offenses in 1966 and again in 1973, Rockefeller was part of the effort to reform New York’s outdated and overly punitive criminal justice system. The judicial discretion Rockefeller blamed for exacerbating New York’s drug problem, for example, was an innovation adopted in the 1960s to counteract the state’s overreliance on protracted sentences. Rockefeller’s 1973 proposals reversed recent reforms in the state’s criminal justice system intended to prioritize rehabilitation over lengthy prison terms. Numerous experts in the field, along with a Republican-led legislative committee assembled in 1966, agreed that the system was inequitable, chaotic, and favored harsh punishments for the poor and unconnected. Rockefeller’s proposal of extreme sentences, however, would not address those problems. Instead, by taking advantage of the public’s frustration and growing albeit unsubstantiated perception that a lenient criminal justice system had contributed to crime, Rockefeller amplified the system’s tendency to produce unequal outcomes. The system of the 1960s was imperfect and discriminatory toward nonwhite but also poor defendants. Rather than attempt to address those inequities, Rockefeller set his sights on appeasing reactionary critics and shoring up his own electability and, in the process, unleashed greater inequality.

Rockefeller’s drug laws undid reforms that had been several years in the making and implemented with his approval. In 1962, Rockefeller had appointed a commission to review and revise New York’s penal code, which had gone without major changes since 1881. The three-year process resulted in the simplification and reorganization of the state’s penal laws and substantive changes such as the abolishment of capital punishment except when a police officer was murdered or when an inmate serving a life sentence committed murder, which the state legislature passed and Rockefeller signed into law in 1965. The new penal law, which was the result of much compromise—it was simultaneously called too punitive and too lenient by detractors—was signed into law in 1965, but it would not go into effect until September 1, 1967. Revisions to the sentencing structure drew criticism because it relied more heavily on the discretion of judges, which was intended to correct the state’s previous reliance on mandatory sentences that many believed were excessive. The revised penal code also established a statewide system of parole for those in county jails who were convicted of misdemeanors. This change would again allow parole boards to determine when a person was rehabilitated and then grant their release rather than make every prisoner complete a prison term.⁷⁵ The New York State District Attorneys Association rejected the new approach to sentencing as too lenient because it removed mandatory minimums, while the National Council on Crime and Delinquency advocated for the abolition of all minimum sentences. A reliance on judicial discretion was intended to allow judges to apply sentences that suited the individual rather than the crime in an effort to strike a balance between deterrence and rehabilitation.⁷⁶ Reformers concerned by the length of sentences supported this approach because they believed the nation’s justice system relied too heavily on excessive sentences that were sometimes so severe that juries and judges were reluctant to convict defendants because of the length of mandatory sentences.

Many in the criminal justice system considered the use of plea bargains and judicial discretion necessary or useful reforms, but the practices angered New Yorkers who thought they prevented the state from lowering crime rates. Studies conducted by the Committee on Crime and the New York Times drew attention to sentencing disparities in the state that resulted in drug dealers who, based on the significant quantity of heroin found in their possession, would be eligible for significant sentences but had avoided extended jail time. The New York Times conducted a four-week study of sentences in the state courts that found the number of convictions dropped from 18,000 in 1966 to 12,500 in 1972. Lesley Oelsner of the New York Times concluded, “Homicide convictions often bring four-year terms, armed robbers are sent away for one year, and at least until recently, the majority of convicted drug pushers did not go to jail at all.” The significant drop in jail terms was attributed to overburdened courts and prosecutors. To clear the dockets, it became common practice to offer plea bargains that resulted in reduced charges and light sentences in return for a guilty plea. The New York Times also found that some judges avoided giving convicts maximum sentences because they had lost faith in the state prison system’s ability to reform inmates. They avoided long sentences in hopes they would not produce hardened criminals in a problem-ridden prison system. Defenders of the plea bargaining system argued that it ensured convictions, even when the prosecution might not have enough evidence to get a conviction for someone who was otherwise known to be involved in criminal activity. Additionally, it enabled the city and state to save time and money on trials. Whereas members of the justice system acknowledged the practical benefits of plea bargaining and the problems of an overburdened court system, a large percentage of the public was dissatisfied; a national poll conducted by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that 73 percent of respondents believed that the courts in their area did not deal with criminals harshly enough.⁷⁷

Critics of New York’s criminal justice system were also concerned that it was rife with inequities—exacerbated by capricious judges—that resulted in harsh sentences for nonwhite New Yorkers in particular. The New York Times highlighted severe disparities in sentences due to judicial discretion in 1972. A recent example involved a man who was arrested for selling drugs to maintain his own habit. The defendant, who had a previous record, was convicted in a jury trial of six charges (two Class C felonies, two Class D felonies, and two Class A misdemeanors). State Supreme Court justice Paul A. Fino of the Bronx sentenced the defendant to two consecutive fifteen-year terms. The New York Times reported that similar cases usually only resulted in a sentence of a few years in prison or probation if the “addict-pusher” enrolled in a treatment program. A number of judges who were asked their opinion of Fino’s verdict said they would have sentenced him to a range that included probation up to four years.⁷⁸ Although the New York Times reported on the seemingly illogical sentencing system that appeared to be influenced by the defendant’s economic status, the temperament of the judge, and geography, it also found sentence disparities based on the race of the defendant. Oelsner reported that nonwhites served, on average, longer terms in prison. According to the Federal Bureau of Prison’s records, nonwhites averaged 57.5 months in prison compared to 42.9 months for whites. The discrepancy remained even when the two groups were sentenced for the same crime. When it came to drug cases, nonwhites were committed for 81.1 months, while whites were jailed for 61.1 months. For income tax evasion, the average jail term was 28.6 months for nonwhites, compared with 12.8 months for whites. Federal judge Marvin E. Frankel put it succinctly: “There’s too little law and too much discretion. There aren’t enough rules of general application that tell everyone where he stands.”⁷⁹ The study also noted that white-collar crimes earned far shorter sentences than nonviolent “common crimes,” the difference between bank robbery or auto theft versus tax evasion, even if the white-collar crime involved the loss of far more money. The variety of sentences was due in part to the increased judicial discretion in the system, which would make “permissive” judges a target when drug dealers received seemingly short sentences. Whereas some judges criticized the system, alongside lawyers, penologists, and legislators, others defended sentencing disparities as the result of their tailoring sentences for individual cases.⁸⁰

Rockefeller could readily find agreement that New York’s criminal justice system needed reform, but his emphasis on extending mandatory minimums was antithetical to a recent legislative investigation. Just days before Rockefeller proposed sweeping changes to drug sentencing, a legislative committee led by conservative Syracuse Republican senator John H. Hughes presented recommendations to bring order to the criminal justice system based on nearly six years of work. The Joint Legislative Committee on Crime, Its Causes, Control and Effect on Society published a report in January 1973 that prescribed the enforcement of current laws, rather than implementing drastic reforms, to repair what it called “our chaotic criminal justice system.” The committee determined that the state’s number one criminal justice problem was court congestion, which was due to “increases in law enforcement productivity” that had produced a huge number of felony indictments that could not be managed by the state’s judges, courtrooms, district attorneys, and available criminal defense counsel. As a result, the state had relied on plea bargaining to relieve some of the pressure. Although plea bargaining was widely deemed a necessary tool, it had left many people dissatisfied including the public and police who were angered by the number of defendants who received shortened sentences and fines. Prison inmates were also critical of the process. The committee, hindered by a lack of reliable data, distributed six hundred questionnaires to inmates to gain insight into the seeming misuse of the plea bargaining system. The committee found that not only did 88 percent of respondents say they were solicited to enter a guilty plea, but 91 percent said they were coached to say that no promises were made to them in return. Far from eliciting relief for reduced sentences, 72 percent said they were dissatisfied with their legal counsel, while 58 percent said that in the future, they would stand trial rather than plead guilty.⁸¹ It was also noted that 75 percent of inmates were unable to obtain counsel, and the probability of going to jail was not determined by the crime committed but the defendant’s race and class. The plea bargain system was causing harm, but the committee did not recommend replacing the practice with longer sentences for everyone convicted.

The Hughes committee concluded that not only was the plea bargaining system flawed, but the entire criminal justice system needed reform because sentences were applied unequally. “A check of narcotics cases revealed ‘an unconscionable disparity’ of sentences,” noted the committee, “in which possession of marijuana drew up to 10 years and the sale of more than a pound of heroin resulted in guilty pleas to lesser charges with fines as low as $500 and jail sentences ‘averaging 11 months.’ ”⁸² It also found bias against defendants with little means or connections because “only those defendants who are without funds or who are unconnected with organized crime syndicates are sentenced to prison” in the state’s criminal justice system. It concluded that the plea bargaining system resulted in poor outcomes for defendants with few resources or proper representation, while defendants with better resources could use the system to obtain disproportionately shorter sentences in comparison. The most vulnerable were poor Black defendants. The committee explained, “The probability of going to jail appeared to follow this schedule: (a) poor and Black (b) poor and white (c) middle class Black and white. Members of organized crime comprised an insignificant number and rich people are least liable to confinement.”⁸³ The committee cited numerous examples of major narcotics dealers getting light sentences in return for the quick conclusion of their cases, while narcotic-addicted dealers—one offender with no previous criminal record received a seven- to ten-year sentence for possession of nine ounces of marijuana—faced inexplicably severe punishment.

Like Rockefeller, the Hughes committee took great issue with New York’s criminal justice system, but unlike the governor, it called for holistic reforms to the application of current laws. It also blamed Rockefeller for not ensuring the state had the resources to enforce its laws. The committee, which Hughes led until his death in 1972, agreed with Rockefeller’s claims that the narcotics crisis jeopardized the survival of the nation, but he and the committee were dissatisfied with the state leaders’ responses. The problem, found the committee, was inconsistent enforcement of the state’s laws, not a need for longer sentences. The New York Times quoted the committee as concluding, “The Governor is constitutionally charged with the responsibility of seeing to it that the narcotics laws are faithfully executed. Until now, that responsibility has been shirked with disastrous consequences.”⁸⁴ The report found that the “appalling” state of the narcotics law enforcement could only be remedied “if the state can raise the necessary funds and only the Governor has the power to supervise the local prosecutors and their offices.” Rockefeller did not heed the advice and warnings of this committee that had been assembled in 1966. Instead of pushing for consistent enforcement of existing laws, he contradicted years of research conducted by the state’s legislators by proposing even more severe sentences and an end to plea bargaining, which would exacerbate the problems in a system that had institutionalized unequal treatment for racial minorities and the poor. The committee warned that if state leadership did not implement effective reform that punished heroin dealers consistently, the public would respond in an extreme fashion. The committee’s warning would be prescient: “If our system of law loses the confidence of the public over the failure to resolve the narcotics issue, then we can expect the public to take action themselves in perhaps destructive ways, or to delegate increased power to the leader promising strong action on their behalf.”⁸⁵ After Rockefeller announced his proposal, the New York Times noted that rather than improve the state’s administration of its current programs, which failed to even document accurately the narcotics crisis that Rockefeller regularly lamented, the governor announced a “crackdown” that was “little better than a politically attuned harangue that threatens to make a bad situation worse.”⁸⁶ Ultimately, the inconsistent enforcement of laws would encourage the public to demand even longer sentences. Without a commitment to address the forces that led to inequitable sentencing, however, nonwhites and the poor would bear the brunt of disproportionately long mandatory minimum sentences.

African Americans: “The First Victims”

African Americans who held the most conservative views on illegal narcotics like the religious leaders who attended Rockefeller’s press conference endorsed the Rockefeller drug laws, but far from everyone agreed.⁸⁷ Those who supported Rockefeller were on the extreme end of the spectrum and represented one of many views held by African Americans in New York City. Shortly after Rockefeller’s announcement, C. Gerald Fraser of the New York Times captured the diversity of opinion in Central Harlem, the community understood to have been affected the most by drug addiction and crime. Fraser noted that he heard from numerous people who expressed concern that Rockefeller’s proposal would victimize people with illegal narcotics addiction, while others discussed what Fraser described as “long-held Black community fears” that the government sought to round up young Black kids and “put them in concentration camps.” Of the thirteen people quoted in the article, seven were against the proposal, five supported it, while one woman, a school principal, said she supported taking a “firmer stand” against criminals but expressed her belief that Rockefeller’s proposal was part of a larger plan to destroy Black and Puerto Rican communities. The two people who offered the most unqualified support for the plan were also the most prominent people interviewed: Les Matthews, a columnist for the New York Amsterdam News, and Dr. Benjamin Watkins, a podiatrist and chiropractor, who held the honorary title of mayor of Harlem. Whereas Matthews said he was in favor of burning alive Black dope pushers, Watkins, who said he had been robbed at least six times, said he supported the “harshest” punishment possible to “remove this contagion from our community.”⁸⁸ Watkins, who worked with people addicted to drugs, was passionate enough about his position that he followed up his interview with a letter to the governor to reiterate his support. In his letter to Rockefeller, he advocated for life sentences or the death penalty for drug dealers who, he said, caused the death of “junkies” and people who were mugged. In his view, the judges, police, legislators, and sociologists who opposed Rockefeller’s plan had not been personally affected by the community degradation caused by drug dealers. Watkins also attributed resistance to Rockefeller’s plan to a general decline in society that also made draft dodging and opposition to public prayer and the singing of the national anthem acceptable.⁸⁹ Matthews and Watkins were staunch supporters of punitive responses, but they were outliers among those interviewed of all classes who expressed suspicion and fear that the new laws would unfairly target poor African Americans.

Even the itty bitty ones are on dope, so he just wants to throw them away for life.… To catch these young boys around here and give them life.… Life is a long time.

—Lillie Cain, Employee, the Maternity and Family Planning Clinic, January 5, 1973

The concern expressed in Harlem after Rockefeller announced his new drug reforms was common for residents who had well-established concerns about heavy-handed law enforcement in their communities.⁹⁰ A year and a half earlier, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who was a metropolitan reporter for the New York Times and founder of the newspaper’s Harlem Bureau, profiled residents of East Harlem’s Lincoln Housing Project, who, despite the constant specter of crime, resisted relying solely on the police and the criminal justice system.⁹¹ Mrs. Pauline Withers, for example, a mother of five and resident of what the reporter called “one of the worst crime areas in the city,” shared that living in the Lincoln Houses required constant vigilance because of the crime that she and other residents attributed to the “growing addict population.” Withers’s twenty-three-year-old son discussed a community effort he participated in to patrol the area to reduce open-air shooting galleries and prostitution. Despite these issues, however, he and his mother criticized “insensitive” white police officers—only 27 percent of the local 25th Precinct was Black and Puerto Rican—who had a negative attitude toward Blacks, which could lead to the escalation of violence during police interventions.⁹² The same summer that Withers and her son sought a balanced approach to law enforcement, the newly appointed sixth division commanding officer, Donald F. Cawley, criticized members of the Black community who, he said, “try to take prisoners from the police officer.” Cawley, who expressed a goal of improving community relations between police and the residents of Central Harlem, said he could not understand why members of the Black community tried to prevent the arrest of African Americans who committed crimes within their community. The new commanding officer, a white resident of Queens, who it was reported read six months’ worth of the New York Amsterdam News in preparation for his new assignment, said his goal was to improve the precinct’s record for serving the community rather than focusing on arrest statistics.⁹³ African American communities such as the one on Hunter-Gault’s beat had long experienced and lamented the deleterious effects of narcotics in their communities. Although residents were undoubtedly frustrated by high rates of crime and addiction in their communities, they were also dissatisfied with the police who patrolled their streets. Rockefeller pointed to communities such as Central Harlem as proof that reforms were needed and boasted the support of the Black community, but numerous residents rejected heavy-handed and simplistic responses to crime. The New York Times found Harlem residents were weary of the governor’s plan and sought discretion from the police and restraint from the justice system.

About a week after his sensational Red Room press conference, Rockefeller encountered resolute opposition from an African American legislator during a rare two-hour appearance before the senate and assembly codes committees to defend his drug proposals. Many legislators were dubious, but the most antagonistic exchange was between Rockefeller and African American Democratic assemblyman Arthur O. Eve of Buffalo. Eve began by saying that Rockefeller’s proposal, which he called “the ghetto genocide bill,” was unworthy of consideration. He argued that the new laws would create chaos in the ghetto, “leaving that community without any hope of really correcting the serious problems” caused by crime and other social ills at the moment that the state and federal governments were cutting funding for social services. Eve also rejected Rockefeller’s proposals because they would be layered on top of a failed criminal justice system that targeted racial minorities and the poor and also because he believed it did not address the root causes that fueled drug addiction and the narcotics trade. Rockefeller refuted Eve’s argument, which he said was based on an old concept that “drug addiction grows out of degradation.” The governor claimed that the spread of drug addiction to suburbs and college campuses was proof that the drug problem was not tied to poverty and social inequality. Rather than targeting already disadvantaged urban communities, Rockefeller said his proposal was intended to help the “decent residents, the wonderful people who have come to New York from all over the world and from all over this country and from Puerto Rico to find opportunity and employment, who are concentrated in these ghetto areas.”⁹⁴ This argument did not address the unequal administration of the criminal justice system that punished nonwhites and economically disadvantaged defendants more harshly than their suburban counterparts. Rockefeller’s reasoning, however, fit within his larger argument that the state of New York had already tried—at great expense—to fix social problems with treatment and social services and now it was time to abandon those efforts.

Not all Black legislators shared Eve’s conclusion; like the larger Black community, Black legislators held a range of opinions on Rockefeller’s drug proposals—in 1966 and 1973—but even those who supported them often expressed reservations. In 1966, Black state legislators such as Senator Basil Paterson and Assemblyman Percy Sutton voted reluctantly for Rockefeller’s drug proposals. Like many other legislators, they criticized aspects of the bill such as the compulsory commitment provision—Sutton of Harlem referred to it as “human removal”—but voted for it anyway.⁹⁵ In 1973, Rockefeller found more unequivocal support for his proposals from Black legislators such as Assemblyman Samuel D. Wright of Brooklyn, who was the chairperson of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus in the state legislature, and Assemblyman Guy R. Brewer of Queens who went on the record in support of the initial proposal in January, although Wright opposed life sentences for people who sold drugs to support their habit.⁹⁶ Of the four members of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus who served as senators at the time of the vote for the Rockefeller drug laws, one voted for it (Vander L. Beatty of Brooklyn), one was absent (Joseph L. Galiber of the Bronx), and Robert Garcia of Brooklyn, and Sidney von Luther of Manhattan voted against it.⁹⁷ Legislators of all backgrounds felt pressure to register concern about drugs in New York, but it was a complex issue for the Black community and those who represented it. When given the opportunity to question Rockefeller, another Black member of the committee, Senator Joseph L. Galiber of the Bronx, expressed concern about inequality in the justice system. He wanted to know if defendants could receive an “absolute right” to lie detector tests because his community had experienced problems with police officers planting narcotics on people.⁹⁸ Looking to the criminal justice system for answers was particularly complicated considering long-standing conflicts and mistrust between many African Americans and the police who patrolled their communities.⁹⁹

Rockefeller’s unreserved embrace of punitive drug policies that further empowered law enforcement and the broader criminal justice system was a tacit dismissal of substantial evidence that African Americans in particular were victims of abusive policing practices. African Americans in New York City—from the ministers who supported Rockefeller to mothers in public housing to business owners—expressed frustration about the policing in their communities in 1973. Their dissatisfaction was not new, but by this time, many more New Yorkers were concerned by the New York City Police Department, in large part because of an exposé published by the New York Times in April 1970. Investigative reporter David Burnham with the aid of a whistleblower on the force, Frank Serpico, reported widespread corruption in the police force.¹⁰⁰ The article resulted in Lindsay appointing the Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption, commonly known as the Knapp Commission, which conducted a highly publicized investigation and hearings that found that corruption was the rule rather than the exception in the New York City Police Department. The committee’s 1973 findings included the extraordinary conclusion that police officers fell into two categories: “meat-eaters,” who made collecting payoffs and committing crimes their full-time work as police officers, and “grass-eaters,” who accepted payoffs and participated in graft when the opportunity arose. Although the commission said it was impossible to know how much of an effect corruption had on the spread of narcotics, it acknowledged that widespread corruption eroded residents’ confidence in the department and its efforts to address the spread of narcotics. The report identified numerous examples of police who accepted payoffs, exchanged narcotics for stolen goods, and supplied drugs that dealers would sell on their behalf. Police corruption was best organized and lucrative in Black communities such as Central Harlem where some precincts were called “the Gold Coast” by police “because they contained so many payoff-prone activities, numbers and narcotics being the biggest.” According to the report, the presence of corruption, which it identified as “the most serious problem facing the Department,” intensified as the narcotics trade took off in recent years and thrived because city officials did not take “adequate steps” to intervene and the police officers who did not participate in the elaborate payoff system remained silent.¹⁰¹ The presence of corruption in urban communities had a significant impact on many African Americans’ relationship with the police, as well as government more generally. Forty years after the conclusion of the commission, its chief counsel, Michael F. Armstrong, observed that although “it was clear that the brunt of police shakedowns was felt by minorities,” few took their complaints to the commission as Armstrong had expected. Instead, minorities suffered in silence as New York City police abused their authority because, Armstrong noted, “people simply did not trust us.”¹⁰² Within this context, many African Americans who were concerned about drugs in their community were reluctant to turn to the criminal justice system for protection.

Black opposition to Rockefeller’s drug proposals could also be found in newspapers from the Chicago Defender to the Los Angeles Sentinel, but expressions of skepticism and, ultimately, opposition could be found most consistently in the Washington Post and New York Amsterdam News.¹⁰³ One of the most prominent Black columnists to comment on Rockefeller’s plan was William Raspberry of the Washington Post. Raspberry said he could relate to what he assumed was Rockefeller’s exasperation with the seemingly intractable drug addiction problem. He reasoned, “Why else would the good governor be willing to make it automatically more costly to sell a piece of hash to a friend than to commit murder?” Raspberry did not condemn Rockefeller, but he questioned whether his approach would work, not only because there was too much money at stake for major drug dealers who would be undeterred but because it was likely that most dealers were selling to maintain their habits. In either circumstance, he said it was doubtful that a life sentence would be any more effective than the current twenty- or thirty-year sentences as a deterrent.¹⁰⁴ Closer to home, the editorial board of the New York Amsterdam News expressed similar doubts despite its previous calls for a more assertive effort to end the drug problem. A week after Rockefeller announced his proposal, the newspaper observed, “The proposal raises as many questions as it does hope.” Although it agreed that “something drastic must be done,” the editorial expressly rejected Rockefeller’s push to treat anyone caught with a drug the same despite age or illness and called for an emphasis on treatment whenever possible.¹⁰⁵

Not everyone associated with the New York Amsterdam News opposed the drug laws, but the newspaper published a series of editorials that expressed a clear disapproval of the laws from inception to implementation. Eight months later and only weeks before the new drug laws would take effect, the editorial board warned its readers about the new law, which it noted the “Amsterdam News, opposed, but could not prevent.” The law posed an “immediate and drastic” danger that would “hit heavily among Blacks and Puerto Ricans” and impact many of the newspaper’s readers. Of special concern, the law would restrict plea bargaining, lead to many more trials, and increase jail time because of mandatory minimums for convicted people with illegal narcotics addiction and maximum sentences that included lifetime supervision.¹⁰⁶ The day the law took effect, the newspaper warned that the new law was expected to double the number of inmates and lead to more overcrowding, which had precipitated the Attica rebellion two years before. The editorial also offered support for rehabilitating inmates who suffered from addiction and suggested they be placed in separate facilities dedicated to rehabilitation “rather than being merely warehoused as unwanted human baggage.”¹⁰⁷ A week later, H. Carl McCall, the newspaper’s chairman of the editorial board, wrote a separate statement that echoed the previous editorials but was especially critical of the lack of diversity among the additional judges appointed to handle the expected increased demand on the courts. McCall wrote, “If we’ve got to live with this new drug law, at least let us be living alongside some judges we have confidence in, and who we think might understand the depths of the narcotics problem.” He also called for additional training for judges to ensure that they understood “the human dimensions of the judgements they will be rendering.”¹⁰⁸ Rockefeller appointed Howard Jones as one of the initial sixteen judges assigned to hear the expected influx of narcotics cases. The group included nine Republicans, six Democrats, and one Liberal Party member. Jones, a Republican from New Rochelle, was the only Black judge appointed—a Puerto Rican judge by the name of Manuel Ramos, a former assemblyman from the Bronx, joined Jones as the other nonwhite judge—to preside over narcotics cases in New York City. It is unclear if Jones accepted the judgeship because he thought he would be more compassionate toward drug-dependent defendants or African Americans swept up in the system, but his confirmation reflects Rockefeller’s ability to neutralize critics.

Black people are doubly victimized by the high incidence of crime and by the clumsy attempts to exploit the high rates of crime perpetrated by black people to further isolate us and to further divide the country along racial lines.

—Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Executive Director of the National Urban League, 1973

Six years after the Rockefeller drug laws took effect, Sol Corbin, who left Rockefeller’s employ in 1965, observed during a conversation with Morrow that he believed that the laws passed because they resonated with parents whose children had become addicted to drugs and people who were frustrated and in search of answers “that seemed to have a certainty to it.”¹⁰⁹ The laws, which Rockefeller’s staff and state legislators first rejected as ridiculous, gained traction, according to Corbin, because the children of “law abiding, well meaning, decent families” were besieged by serious drug problems. During the conversation, Morrow, who referred to the bill’s passage as a miracle, emphasized that African Americans supported Rockefeller’s proposal. In Morrow’s words, “We had the black community with us.” Corbin concurred noting that African Americans were impacted most negatively by the proliferation of illegal narcotics. Morrow, who agreed, said Blacks were “the first victims.”¹¹⁰ Rockefeller’s former staffers’ insistence that the laws were beneficial to African Americans may have been a self-conscious attempt to deny what had been obvious during the debates over Rockefeller’s initial proposal: New York’s criminal justice system disproportionately punished African Americans and the drug laws were likely to worsen those disparities. Rockefeller and his staff’s failure to collaborate with African Americans who expressed concerns about the bills suggests they were not the intended beneficiaries. At the very least, the concerns expressed by people like Howard Jones—the top African American in the Rockefeller administration who oversaw its leading anti-narcotics effort—were rejected because doing so would diminish the political utility of a policy that eschewed evidence and the advice of experts all in service to Rockefeller’s goal of proving he was not that liberal. In Morrow’s words, African Americans were “the first victims” of the heroin surge. The Rockefeller drug laws also made them the first and most persistent victims of Rockefeller’s drug policies.

Walker, the longtime adviser to Rockefeller on urban affairs, had a nuanced and conflicted perspective on Rockefeller’s drug laws as an African American who had experienced personal harm because of the illegal narcotics trade. Walker’s son’s drug use resulted in what his father called a fourteen-year addiction and an eight-and-a-half-year sentence at Attica for a second felony conviction on drug-related charges approximately a decade after the deadly retaking of the institution. When asked about Rockefeller’s drug laws in the early 1990s, Walker explained that although he did not support them enthusiastically, he did not blame Rockefeller for trying a drastic solution. In reference to Rockefeller’s approach, Walker explained, “I resisted it. I went along with it because drugs were so rampant, and I just felt it was kind of an interim effort. I mean, I didn’t know where else to turn.” Walker also said that he did not “hold that against [Rockefeller]” because the nation was still unable to find a solution twenty years later. For Walker, Rockefeller’s greatest betrayal of racial minorities was his handling of Attica, not the drug laws. He described Attica as the “inkblot on all of the good.” Walker rejected the conclusion that Rockefeller’s handling of Attica was due to a desire to portray himself as a “tough law and order type.” Instead, he blamed the decision on bad advice given to him by his advisers Douglas and Norm Hurd. Even though he refused to say Rockefeller had abandoned his principles, he did acknowledge a change in the governor. Walker noted, for example, that he had a difficult time getting in touch with Rockefeller for official business in the months before Attica. Over two decades later, Walker did not put Rockefeller in the same category as Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, whom he called a fascist, but when asked about Rockefeller’s cuts to welfare being the result of a conservative turn, he concluded, “Well, I think he probably mirrored the climate in America. All of America turned conservative.”¹¹¹

Rockefeller justified his drug policies by arguing that he was protecting “good” Americans of all socioeconomic backgrounds and races who were fed up with the “bad” people who preyed on their neighbors. Critics warned that the reforms would warp further a discriminatory criminal justice system, but Rockefeller dismissed their warnings. Despite considerable criticism and a lack of evidence supporting his premise, the legislature aligned with him. Rockefeller’s drug policies did not immediately lead to noticeable results in a state that had been turning away from excessively long sentences during the 1960s, but they laid the groundwork for a new era of punitive enforcement that eventually filled New York’s jails with low-level nonviolent Black and Latino drug offenders without addressing illegal narcotics addiction, drug-related crime, and racially discriminatory law enforcement practices. Similarly, his approach to welfare reform capitalized on the stigmatization of welfare recipients who were racialized as Black and—without evidence—accused them of fraud that would justify cutting their benefits. The result was an urban policy that treated poor and often Black city dwellers akin to the slums that the federal government had earmarked for removal. Rockefeller’s final term as governor became the period when he used the tools of government to divide New Yorkers according to race and class with the aid of the growing chasm between city and suburb. His application of punitive urban policy enabled him to punish the most vulnerable among them, whether that be in the fields of drug treatment, law enforcement, welfare, or drug policy. Rockefeller’s reactionary policies were intended to help him enter the next stage in his political career in a Republican Party that had rejected him as a liberal. The benefits were negligible for his political career, but his shortsighted objective resulted in lasting repercussions that would not come to fruition until the next generation of political leaders embraced the punitive policies he helped normalize.