But I think a lot of people in the community think we house only low-level offenders.

Under another new law, low-level offenders will be kept in work release programs or sent to drug treatment.

Many judges say current laws have clogged jails and too often punish low-level offenders.

Critics have called its emphasis on low-level offenders too aggressive.

They said that under normal circumstances, such low-level offenders would have seen a judge and been released within days.

"I think there was a misperception that the people serving these sentences were low-level nonviolent offenders," she said in an interview yesterday.

The inmate boom is a particular challenge for local jails, which traditionally held low-level offenders but are now taking on the characteristics of prisons.

But the push toward alternate rehabilitation and earlier paroles has been focused more on low-level, nonviolent offenders.

Of the 39 men who slept there the first night, 2 were low-level offenders, officials said.

As a result, New York's prisons are jammed with low-level offenders and addicts.