By The Editors

The New York State Assembly, the lower chamber of the state legislature last week approved a bill eliminating New York’s mandatory-sentencing requirement for drug offenses.

The proposed measure would enact new sentencing guidelines and give judges more discretion in sentencing those convicted of drug offenses. The measure, which the overwhelmingly Democratic Assembly has approved several times in recent years, still has to be approved by the New York State Senate. The upper chamber, controlled by Republicans for four decades, had routinely blocked any reduction in the harshness of the drug laws. Some observers say approval there is not at all certain now despite it now being controlled by Democrats.

Nonetheless, the action has stirred hopes that one of the most controversial eras in the state’s history of fighting crime will come to an end. That era began in 1973 when liberal Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller pushed through a willing legislature one of the toughest anti-crime bills of the postwar era. That legislation dictated mandatory lengthy sentences – of up to 25 years – for even low-level drug-possession and drug-selling offenses.

As a result, the number of inmates in New York’s prisons exploded over the next three decades. By 1999 there were 72,000 inmates in the state’s 71 prisons – 29 percent of whom were behind bars for drug crimes. The so-called Rockefeller laws were partially changed in 2004, resulting in reduced sentences for a small number – about 700 – of those incarcerated for drug offenses. The new measure, if passed, would make just under 2,000 inmates eligible sentence reduction, according to a spokesman for Jeffrion L. Aubry, the Queens, N.Y. assemblyman who is the bill’s chief sponsor.

Currently, there are nearly 60,000 inmates in New York’s prisons; about 12,000 are serving sentences for drug-related crimes