Op-Ed Contributor

The High Cost of Empty Prisons

By ROBERT GANGI

Published: October 11, 2009

LAST Wednesday, changes to New York’s notorious Rockefeller drug laws went into effect, allowing judges to shorten the prison terms of some nonviolent offenders. This measure will further reduce New York’s prison population, which has already declined, in the past 10 years, from about 71,600 in 1999 to about 59,300 today. (The state’s crime rate also dropped substantially during that time.)

For the full story

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/opinion/12gangi.html?_r=1&emc=eta1