V. CONCLUSION

Unnecessarily harsh prison sentences for drug offenders needlessly inflict pain and hardship on their children. There are community-based sanctions that respond to drug offenses without sending parents hundreds of miles away from their children and locking them behind bars. When drug offender parents are addicted, there are community treatment programs that would keep the parents close to their children. If New York legislators restored to judges the discretion to tailor sanctions appropriate to the seriousness of the drug offense and the culpability of the individual offender, fewer people would be sent to prison, and fewer children would be among the collateral casualties of the war on drugs.