The Judiciary Committee voted to require a Racial and Ethnic Impact Statement for sHB 6581 (File 732), “An Act Concerning the Enhanced Penalty for the Sale or Possession of Drugs Near Schools, Day Care Centers, and Public Housing Projects.” This report provides information in addition to what appears in the statement on the file.

SUMMARY

sHB 6581 (File 732), “An Act Concerning the Enhanced Penalty for the Sale or Possession of Drugs Near Schools, Day Care Centers, and Public Housing Projects,” makes a number of changes to the laws that enhance the penalties for drug activity near schools, day care centers, and public housing projects. It:

1. allows the prison term imposed under these laws to be suspended under any circumstances, and not just the limited ones set by current law and

2. limits the scope of these laws by (a) reducing the size of the zones around the locations from 1,500 to 200 feet and (b) restricting the time of day when illegal activity occurring near schools and day care centers qualifies for the enhanced penalty.

The bill specifies that the zones are measured from the perimeter of the property.

In 2005, we created maps showing how the current drug zone laws affect specific towns (see OLR Reports 2001-R-0330 and 2005-R-0460 and the Program Review and Investigations Committee report Mandatory Minimum Sentences, 2005). We were not able to update these maps to show the affect of the bill's changes on individual towns within the time frame for producing the racial and ethnic impact statement.

This report provides maps for four towns in Connecticut to show how the bill would affect different types of towns in the state: Danbury, Durham, Madison, and New Haven. For each town, we include a map showing the 1,500-foot drug zones required by current law and a map showing the drug zones reduced to 200 feet as required by the bill.

MAPS

In 2005, we obtained data on schools, day care centers, and public housing to create drug zone maps in 12 towns. We obtained information from the (1) Department of Public Health for day care centers; (2) Department of Education for schools; and (3) Department of Economic and Community Development for public housing projects.

Using the same data, we chose four of these 12 towns to show the bill's impact. The four towns we selected show the bill's impact on towns of different sizes in terms of population and geography:

1. Danbury (population 79,226, 44.3 square miles),

2. Durham (population 7,397, 23.6 square miles),

3. Madison (population 18,793, 36.8 square miles), and

4. New Haven (population 123,932, 18.9 square miles).

Each map is drawn to the same scale (one inch=two miles), so that the geographic size of the towns can be compared. Each map also shows a detailed close-up of a section of town to show the impact of the drug zones on a particular area (using a scale of one inch=one mile).

Current law appears to measure the zones from the property boundaries and the bill specifies that the zones are measured from the perimeter of the property. We do not have access to files showing property boundaries. Thus, the maps show the radius from the center of the property instead of from its property lines and underestimate the areas within which enhanced penalties apply.

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