New York State is largely repealing the infamous drug laws that served as ground zero for a prison-sentencing craze that swept North America and is now discredited.

Governor David Paterson announced a deal with state legislators yesterday to remove many of the "mandatory minimum" sentences imposed for low-level drug crimes by the 1970s-era legislation, known as the Rockefeller drug laws.

After 35 years of stuffing prisons with minor drug felons, state legislators have judged the law's mandatory sentencing provisions as expensive and ineffective.

It's part of a reassessment of "tough on crime and sentencing" laws taking place across the United States, which has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world. Canada, ironically, is bucking that trend.

"Canadian policy-makers have picked up the cudgel of minimum mandatory sentences at the same time as Americans are trying to extricate themselves from them because they have proven to be so destructive," says Craig Jones, director of the John Howard Society, which reintegrates inmates in the community.

Canada's Conservative government last year increased the minimum prison time judges must impose for gun crimes. Last month, it reintroduced a bill that imposed minimum sentences for a long list of drug crimes. It includes a six-month sentence for someone caught growing even one marijuana plant for trafficking.

The toughest minimum sentence under the proposed drug law is three years for anyone creating a public safety hazard in a residential area by producing Schedule 1 drugs – such as cocaine, heroine or methamphetamine.

In another move being sold as "tough on crime," Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan touted yesterday in Toronto his government's plans to stop judges from calculating a "two-for-one" sentencing credit for time that prisoners spend in pre-trial custody.

Experts are almost unanimous in denouncing the mandatory prison sentences as a recipe for swelling an already crowded prison system without reducing crime.

"The question is, 'How do we get the biggest bang for our buck?' " Anthony Doob, a University of Toronto criminologist said yesterday. "I would have thought these days the thing to do is use scarce resources effectively."

University of Ottawa criminologist Irvin Waller said the money would be better spent on outreach programs that target youth at risk, helping them to stay in school or training them for jobs.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson's office did not respond to a request for an interview. In a statement last month, Nicholson described the drug laws as a "measured response" that would jail those who sell or produce drugs, but allow a suspended or reduced sentence for addicts who accept treatment.

In the U.S., the Rockefeller drug laws spawned minimum mandatory sentences for all kinds of crimes. They resulted in a quadrupling of the inmate population between 1973 and the early 1990s across the country. Yet studies indicate that the incarceration explosion – 2.2 million inmates in 2007 and $49 billion (U.S.) in prison costs – has done little to reduce crime.

The recession is forcing a growing number of states to rein in prison budgets. Some, like Kansas and Colorado, are closing prisons. Michigan, which spends more on incarceration than higher education, has eased its mandatory-minimum sentencing laws. New Jersey is replacing jail time with community programs. Others are making it easier to get parole.

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The proposed changes to New York's drug laws, named for former governor Nelson Rockefeller, will hasten the national move away from decades of high-incarceration policies, said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Washington-based Sentencing Project.

"The experience with mandatory minimums is that it sweeps up a whole lower level of offenders and just a relative handful of higher ones. It's overkill," Mauer said. "Unless we address the demand for drugs, we're just recycling people through the prisons."