Drug laws are under review

By RONNIE ELLIS

FRANKFORT — Circuit judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys will get their chance to chime in on Kentucky’s drug laws and whether they need to be amended.

A committee of the Kentucky Criminal Justice Council looking at drug offenses and sentences is considering that question as it works through the larger council to address Kentucky’s soaring jail and prison costs and populations.

The council was charged by Gov. Steve Beshear to look for ways to reduce both populations and costs after a series of media stories, including several by CNHI News Service, about the growing problem.

Kentucky now leads the nation in the rate of incarceration and its prison population has climbed from around 3,000 to over 21,000 in the past 30 years while the state’s corrections budget has skyrocketed from $7 million to nearly $400 million in the same period.

Gregory Bartlett, the vice-chief regional judge for the 16th Circuit in Kenton County who chairs the committee looking at the drug laws, proposed surveying the court officials.

“The point is to get as much input as possible from every perspective,” Bartlett told the committee Wednesday.

Among the questions on the proposed survey are whether penalties for possession of illegal drugs be tied to the quantity of the drug; should simple possession be classified as a misdemeanor if combined with mandatory drug counseling for the offender; how many defendants are actually sentenced to prison for first-time offenses; and what is the typical length of sentence.

Chris Cohron, commonwealth’s attorney in Warren County – the state’s third largest jurisdiction – and president of the Commonwealth’s Attorneys Association, said, “No offenders are being sent to prison on first-time possession charges.”

He said in fact many defendants are probated and then return to court as much as a dozen times in some jurisdictions before they’re sentenced to jail or prison.

Those who say Kentucky sentences too many people for often minor drug crimes believe drug offenses are better dealt with by treatment rather than incarceration. As many as 60 to 70 percent of those behind bars suffer from underlying drug problems, according to various studies. Cohron doesn’t dispute that, but he said Monday it’s not because first-time offenders are routinely or capriciously sentenced to jail time.

Other areas the committee will examine are enhancement of penalties, such as trafficking in drugs within certain distances of schools or possession of a firearm while trafficking and persistent felony offender laws, which lengthen sentences for repeat offenders. Bartlett said he thinks the PFO enhancements are inconsistently applied across jurisdictions and even within some jurisdictions.

He, Cohron and Frank Mascagni, a Louisville defense attorney whose clients include some drug offenders, agreed it’s also difficult to define trafficking, to distinguish between those who are selling drugs for profit and those who sell to associates or simply to support their personal drug use.

“True trafficking is worthy of time in a jail cell in my opinion,” Bartlett said. “But then we get down to what is trafficking.”

The committee also heard from a couple of women who know what the problem looks like from inside one of those cells and from within the grips of drug addiction.

One woman told of her life as a “soccer mom and a PTA mom” whose children went to upscale schools, “but what people didn’t know was I was a heroin addict.” She began through prescription pain killers and soon was using heroin, but while she ran through the family’s savings and encountered the judicial system through a series of bad check charges, she was able to hide her underlying problem for years.

Eventually, she said, she was sentenced to four months in jail.

“I was terrified, but very fortunately for me, I had a judge who believed in treatment,” she continued. “Now my children have a mother and I have a full-time job.”

The other woman was institutionalized early for juvenile offenses, became a heroin addict by 18 and “stealing for a living.” She went to prison on a trafficking charge, but got help through Transitions, a northern Kentucky substance abuse program. The first time didn’t take. Four months later, she was back in prison, but got a second chance at treatment.

Both women work with those suffering from the same addiction problems they once faced.

The committee agreed to two more meetings, the first on Oct. 3 and the second on Oct. 22. They will then report any recommendations to the full Criminal Justice Council, which must make its final recommendations to Governor Beshear by December.