GANJA LET IT GO
Council ready to nix probation pot tests seen as ‘trapdoor’ back to lockup
The City Council is poised to pass a bill Monday that would stop the city from conducting tests for marijuana on people who are on probation, the Daily News has learned.
“This bill will close one trapdoor that trips people up,” said Council Public Safety Committee Chairman Donovan Richards. “Too many people come out, they are trying to do better, and they get busted for marijuana and go back into jail or prison. This sets them back.”
The city conducts hundreds of such tests each year.
The bill was proposed by Richards on Feb. 19, and has moved fairly rapidly through a vetting process to make sure it meets legislative standards.
“We all know that there’s no public safety value in violating people over low-level marijuana offenses, especially today when the state has already legalized medical marijuana and is talking about legalizing recreational use,” Richards (D-Queens) said.
Figures obtained by The News show that 20,000 adults and teens were on probation in 2018, and 600 of them were tested for marijuana. About 270 were rearrested on a marijuana charge during that year.
For every 10 people who successfully complete parole, nine are sent back behind bars, usually for technical violations like marijuana, Richards said.
“We’re trying to build stable communities,” he said. “We want to stabilize people’s lives as much as possible. To violate people for marijuana is a miscarriage of justice.”
Richards noted that five former probation commissioners and former Chief Judge of New York State Jonathan Lippman have agreed the policy should be changed.
Last October, Vincent Schiraldi, a former city probation commissioner, told a state Assembly committee hearing on allowing adult use of marijuana, “Our public tenures and a growing body of research suggest that, in terms of community corrections, less is often more.”
The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice said at the time that the average number of parole violators jailed in the city had risen by 9.5% to 847 in 2017 from 773 in 2014.
Schiraldi told the hearing that parole and probation were intended as diversions from jail when they were created in the 1800s.
“Probation and parole have become much larger than originally intended, with burdensome conditions that serve as trip wires to incarceration rather than as alternatives,” he said, adding there was no evidence that marijuana use “threatens public safety.”
“Likewise there is no public safety justification for routine testing for marijuana for probation or parole,” he said.
Schiraldi spoke at the hearing on behalf of four other former probation commissioners, Martin Horn, Michael Jacobson, James Payne and Raul Russi.
City Probation Department spokeswoman Candace Sandy did not respond to requests for comment and statistics. Council officials said the agency did not object to the bill.
The NYPD referred a request for comment to City Hall.