THE GOVERNMENT'S OWN ADMISSIONS: KEEP THE HEROIN DEALERS OUT OF PRISON, SAVE TAXPAYER MONEY, AND SEND THEM BACK INTO THE COMMUNITY
On February 23, 2016, a group of New York State senators assembled at SUNY Oneonta for a public hearing of the Joint Senate Task Force on Heroin and Opioid Addiction.
The testimony given that day deserves renewed attention.
Among the witnesses were Chenango County District Attorney Joseph A. McBride, who subsequently became a New York State Supreme Court Justice, and then-Delaware County Undersheriff Craig DuMond, then chairman of the Delaware County Drug Task Force, who subsequently became - at least he claims that without the required constitutional and statutory undertaking - Delaware County Sheriff.
The witnesses described a heroin epidemic, drug trafficking, fatal overdoses, public assistance, inadequate housing, and government programs intended to keep certain drug offenders out of prison.
Their testimony raises a fundamental question:
Was the government fighting heroin distribution, or financing a system that allowed heroin dealers to remain in business at the expense of local residents?
A. Chenango County District Attorney Joe McBride: Keeping heroin dealers out of jail and prison is government policy
At pages 73–74 of the Senate transcript, McBride explained how his office distinguished between outside heroin traffickers and local heroin dealers who sold drugs to finance their own addictions.
For the latter category, he described a policy of directing offenders into "Drug Court".
McBride stated:
"We try to get the people into drug court."
He then identified an important consequence:
"It keeps them out of our county jail for a year. It keeps them out of state prison."
Consider the financial implications.
County jails are expensive. State prisons are expensive. Correctional officers, buildings, utilities, food, transportation, medical services, and administration all cost taxpayers money.
Keeping a convicted heroin dealer out of jail or prison can produce substantial savings in correctional expenditures.
But what happens to the dealer?
He does not disappear.
He returns to the community.
And if he continues selling heroin, the resulting costs are imposed on the community: additional drug distribution, overdoses, thefts, burglaries, police calls, emergency medical treatment, property damage, and exposure of other residents to criminal activity.
The government saves the cost of incarceration. The public bears the consequences of the offender's continued presence, continued heroin dealing and continued violence or risk of violence necessarily associated with such an activity.
That is the economic question McBride's testimony raises.
And there is an even more disturbing aspect.
McBride's classification was based on the dealer's motive for selling heroin.
An outsider selling heroin for pure profit was treated as a trafficker deserving incarceration.
A local addict selling heroin to finance his own consumption could be treated as a benign candidate for diversion and release back into the community, to save the county and the state money for incarceration - and to deal again.
But what difference does the seller's motive make to the customer who overdoses?
Does heroin become less lethal when sold by a person who intends to spend the proceeds on more heroin?
Does the danger to a neighborhood diminish because the dealer is himself addicted?
A heroin dealer who sells drugs to support his own habit is still distributing heroin. His customers can still die.
The government knew this. McBride knew it. And contributed to drug proliferation anyway.
B. The Senate heard about hundreds of bags of heroin and young overdose victims
At the same hearing, Senator Terrence Murphy described a recent drug seizure involving a 20-year-old woman.
Authorities recovered 562 bags of heroin and $30,000 in cash.
The seizure occurred in Murphy's district. The testimony did not establish that this particular dealer was selling to support her addiction.
But it demonstrated the volume of heroin that could be circulating through a relatively young dealer's operation.
Murphy also described attending the wake of a 26-year-old man who had died from an overdose.
The juxtaposition is significant.
The senators were hearing about substantial quantities of heroin and young people dying from its consumption.
Meanwhile, prosecutors were describing programs intended to keep certain heroin sellers out of incarceration.
How many bags of heroin were sold by offenders diverted into Drug Court? How many customers overdosed? How many died?
Where are the statistics?
C. McBride acknowledged fatal overdoses following release
McBride also testified about the danger to heroin-dependent individuals returning to the community after incarceration.
He described people who had lost their tolerance during confinement and overdosed after resuming heroin use, sometimes within 24 hours of release.
Other witnesses, including registered nurse Kelly Liner of Friends of Recovery of Delaware and Otsego Counties, addressed the heightened fatal overdose danger following periods of abstinence.
Thus, the government knew that releasing heroin-dependent offenders into environments where heroin remained available could have fatal consequences.
And the government also knew that appropriate housing was unavailable for many of them.
Noel Clinton-Feik, co-owner of Crossroads Inn, testified about inadequate supervised housing, emergency shelter placements, and recovering individuals encountering drug dealers at those placements.
She reported that Delaware County was spending $1 million annually on emergency sheltering.
The problem was plain.
The government sought to keep certain heroin sellers out of prison, obviuosly for double financial benefit - they saved money for incarceration and medical care, and they could be useful as CIs for new drug stings - in full knowledge that they would lack, on release, adequate housing to separate them from the drug trade. In fact, they were very possibly encouraged by the government and plunged right back into drug trade as useful CIs, exposing them and the community to dangers.
Otherwise - where, exactly, were these heroin dealers supposed to go?
Who would house them?
Who would supervise them?
Who would protect their neighbors?
And who would pay when they resumed criminal activity?
D. Delaware County Undersheriff Craig DuMond: At least 90% of drug arrestees were on public assistance
Then-Undersheriff Craig DuMond supplied another remarkable financial fact.
At pages 80–81 of the transcript, he estimated that nine out of ten people arrested in drug-related investigations, if not more, were receiving public assistance.
His estimate included addicts committing lesser offenses and drug dealers.
That means that, according to the chairman of Delaware County's own Drug Task Force, at least 90% of the people being arrested in the drug investigations he described were receiving taxpayer-funded public assistance.
The government was therefore paying public benefits to many of the individuals it was simultaneously investigating and prosecuting.
The government also financed the police departments, prosecutors, courts, treatment services, and correctional institutions involved in their cases.
And, as DuMond acknowledged, the heroin epidemic contributed to increased foster-care placements, generating still more public expenditure. Delaware County has just announced recruitment of more foster parents - did they release too many drug dealers to help proliferate drugs and deprive kids of their parents?
Consider the circularity.
Taxpayers finance public assistance.
Taxpayers finance narcotics investigations.
Taxpayers finance prosecution.
Taxpayers finance diversion and treatment.
Taxpayers finance emergency housing.
Taxpayers finance child-protection interventions and foster care.
And when drug activity destroys privately owned property, the owners may be left to finance the cleanup and restoration themselves.
How much public money was spent on this system, and how much heroin distribution did it actually eliminate?
DuMond's estimate does not establish that every recipient used public assistance to finance drug trafficking. It does establish that a senior Delaware County law-enforcement official recognized substantial overlap between the public-assistance population and people arrested in drug investigations.
The economic implications warrant investigation.
Source: New York State Joint Senate Task Force on Heroin and Opioid Addiction, public hearing at SUNY Oneonta, February 23, 2016; testimony of Joseph A. McBride, Craig DuMond, John Muehl, Noel Clinton-Feik, Kelly Liner, and Senator Terrence Murphy. Laughman criminal proceedings: Chenango County Indictment/Superior Court No. 2014-78; Delaware County Indictment No. 2017-025, County Court Case No. 2017-321, plea proceedings of July 3, 2017.
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