AMERICA’S DRUG LAWS ARE OBSOLETE
11 STATES HAVE DECRIMINALIZED RECREATIONAL POT
LIBERAL STATES SUCH AS CALIFORNIA AND OREGON HAVE UNITED WITH CONSERVATIVE STATES SUCH AS NORTH CAROLINA AND MISSISSIPPI [AND 7 OTHERS]
The National Academy of Sciences in a 1999 study found, according to Peter Reuter ,”You can’t tell the difference that decriminalization of marijuana use necessarily leads to substantial increase in marijuana use.”
In Europe, Italy, Spain and Portugal have decriminalized the personal use of all drugs. However, this decriminalization has not led to increased use.
In the case of cocaine, Spain has one of the highest user rates in he continent. Great Britain, with much stricter laws, has a user rate than Spain which has legalized it.
I have argued for years that to send those convicted of drug usage to prison for long periods of time is one of the biggest waster of money in all governmental units, i.e. states and federal. It costs an average of $25,000 (over $50,000 is some states) per year to keep one person in prison for one year. When we think of imprisoning 1,500,000 individuals for drug use; the cost is astronomical--$37,500,000,000 annually.
We could send each offender to a reasonably good college, or better yet enroll them to a rehabilitation program that would do more good than languishing in a federal or state prison where their lives, limbs, and sexual identity are jeopardized.
IT IS TIME TO ABOLISH PRISON SENTENCES FOR ALL EXCEPT THOSE WHO POSE AN IMMINENT DANGER TO THEMSELVES OR OTHERS.
With the dominance of conservatives in our government, the idiot Congress passed ridiculous laws overriding the power of the judges to hand down appropriate sentences based upon extenuating circumstances. The Congress fixed the sentences and wasted billions of dollars and human lives, all in the name of “getting tough on crime.”
If the American people knew what was going on in many of our prisons today they would abolish all prisons in the country in 24 hours except for those who pose a danger to society. Our penal system makes Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq look like a kiddy party with clowns.
Rape, beatings, forced sexual abuse, life threatening interaction begin gangs, along with the normal punishment of confinement results in individuals returning to society more criminalized than when they entered. Prisons are colleges for crime and there is no doubt about it.
Recidivism is the rate at which those released from prison are re-arrested and re-incarcerated. There are two studies relevant to this point. In report followed 108,580 prisoners released from penitentiaries in 11 states in 1983. The other study traced.272, 111 inmates released from incarceration in fifteen (15) states in 1994. These two studies represent two/thirds of all prisoners released in the United States for that year.
Here is the tragedy and the indictment against the prison system as it now exists—67.5% of the prisoners released were rearrested within 3 years, an increase of 62.5% over those released in 1983.. The study concluded:
”Of course, correlation is not causation and there are many complex factors at issue. While it is not possible to draw conclusive distinctions, the evidence on the whole suggests that the approach we have taken is highly ineffective at addressing the underlying problems, highly inefficient and of great cost.
As in the case of health care, when you have one of the most costly systems in the world, and results that are mediocre compared to elsewhere, it’s probably worth considering new paradigms.
No one is seriously proposing to tear down all of the prisons, but rather to take a long hard look at the approach we have taken.”
The system is broken and has been for years, if not decades. The American taxpayers are paying big bucks for a system that simply does not work. The reason us simple! The paradigm is wrong!. Harsher penalties do not reduce the real rate of recidivism, and do not reduce crime, and more importantly do not reduce the number of people for whom we pay $25,000 per year to house in our penal facilities which do nothing but cause increased crime.
To place men and women behind bars for violation of our outmoded “war on drugs,” does not cure whatever their cause for starting to use drugs in the first place. They need to be rehabilitated and that is the last thing our prisons provide.
Marijuana is no longer the opening round to a life o heavy drug use. There are medicinal uses for cannabis that some states are beginning to recognize. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman reports, “One study found that since it began treating pot possession like jaywalking in 1976, California has saved at least $1 billion.”
From a business point of view only, we are spending billions of dollars on a “dead horse.” We continue build massive prisons when we know that small community based penal complexes are less expensive, more efficient to operate, more conducive to rehabilitation and close enough for the convict’s family to participate in his treatment.
Decades ago, in a more enlightened age, the United States called it a Corrections System. The purpose was to rehabilitate, to modify the behavior, to deal with the reasons that caused the individual to live a life of crime. The purpose was to release a productive human being able to take control of his life and his responsibilities.
We know that those who lack education are less employable than those who have the knowledge, the skills to perform some form of task that give them a way to earn a living, to get married, raise a family, pay taxes and become an asset to themselves and society.
Today, we do nothing but house them in huge warehouses and to keep them from killing each other until their sentence is completed. I expect more for $25,000 a year. In fact, as a society, we should demand more.
In an article entitled “Why are U. S. Incarceration Rates so High,” Michael Torney of the University of Minnesota wrote:
“Most explanations of the unprecedented increase in American incarceration rates are inadequate. Crime rate increases, more punitive public attitudes, postmodernist angst, and cynical politics are all only part of the explanation. Those things characterize all Western countries; in some of these countries, imprisonment rates have long been stable or declining, and, where they are rising, absolute levels and rates of increase are dwarfed by those in America. The scale of the phenomenon is distinctly American. It arises partly from American moralism and partly from structural characteristics of American government that provide little insulation from emotions generated by moral panics and long-term cycles of tolerance and intolerance. “
Isn’t it ironic that “American moralism” is given by Torney as a root cause. If we were, indeed, a moral nation, we would not be locking people up and throwing the key away, or their lives away, or their futures away, just for the hell of it. We do want to help these people, to “correct” these people, we want them out of sight and off of our streets. Period!
The U. S. prison population topped 2 million in 2002. 1 in every 142 residents is now incarcerated. That is the highest number of any nation in the world. Males are locked up at the rate of 1,309 per 100,000 American men. Women’s prison rate is 113 per 100,000.
Youthful offenders under the age of 18 held in jails totaled 3,055 out of 1,200,203 in the states’ systems, while adult jails accounted for 7,248 inmates under the age of 18.
We need reform and it must start at the very beginning. We have too many parents who are unprepared and uneducated in the skills necessary to be a competent parent. Our schools should be teaching not only sex education which is needed to bring the rate of unwanted pregnancies down, but realistic parenting skills so that when a child is born, they know what to do with this “glob of human protoplasm” that suddenly appears in their lives.
When a child gets into trouble consistently in school, we must be willing to provide counseling for the child and the parents to continue to teach both the skills needed to do their job of parenting and help with the emotional maturity needed to be the kind of parent that is required.
There are thousands of emotional conflicted children in our society today; more than ever before. The tension in the home with the father out of work or absent physically and/or emotionally, the mother working one or two jobs to provide food and shelter and also becoming both the father and mother of the family, does not leave much time for the emotional nurturing necessary to rear a healthy child into adulthood.
This does not address the absence of parents from homes in the upper and middle class neighborhoods. With both parents working, children are left to their own imaginings. More sex takes place in the homes of high school students between 2:30 and 5:30 pm every school day, while the children have the house to themselves and a sexual drive that is roaring in both the males and females of the specie. Without practicing safe sex, unwanted pregnancies are more and more common. Unwanted pregnancies lead to unwanted children who sooner or later suffer deeply for lack of the emotional nourishment and physical comfort necessary to become a whole and healthy human being.
Drugs are already in the home of millions of American families. Children turn to drugs to turn off the loneliness, the sadness, the confusion that seems to dominate their young and still maturing minds. Suicide is a problem as well in modern America. With all of the gadgets, and fine homes, and cars we have in the wealthy suburbs, the youth are killing themselves because they lack the one thing they need more than anything else—love, attention, affection, acceptance, and reassurance.
Jails are such a waste. Prisons are nothing more than colleges for crime. 2/3 of those who are released return to the “big house.” In other words recidivism is the prevalent piece of evidence that the system is broken and must be replaced.
We need to begin to build smaller prisons that are close to the neighborhoods, the families, friends, and associates who can be part of the rehabilitation process.
The best way to reduce crime is to reduce the number of laws on the book. Three (3) strikes and you are out is absurd. It cost $50,000 per year per prisoner. We could send them to college cheaper than we can send them to prison.
Which leads me to the next point; only those who are a danger to themselves or others should be locked up. With all of the electronic devices we have available to us to keep track of those in the system, to lock them up, to house them in massive facilities where they do nothing but work out, do menial chores and grow more and more frustrated with themselves and the system is ridiculous. What we should do is place them in a half-way house, or neighborhood prison that kept them in the work force, earning a living, paying for their families upkeep while reporting to their assigned correction facility from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am the next morning would be a much more effective and more economical plan that might, indeed, become a genuine correctional program.
Along with a change of facility, we should also change the agenda. We need to provide educational program that in insure that if they do not have a skilled job, by the time they are released full time back in to the community they will be trained to find a job and do it. We need counselors and therapists to assist these people in working through the conflicts that brought them to the correction system in the first place.
Prisons train men to be life-long criminals. That is why we have such a disgusting rate of recidivism. We must stop the return rate, break the cycle that makes some of our prisoners to perpetually lead a life of crime. Often it is a lack of education. Other times it is a psychological problem that has haunted them since childhood. For others there is a physical problem such as a brain or chemically derived disorder, or in a very few instances a more serious psychiatrically illness.
At present we do nothing except to adjudge the perpetrator for the violation he allegedly executed. We do no diagnostic analysis of the person’s reason for conducting the crime and then imposing a sentence that fits not only the crime, but that fits the needs of the perpetrator’s need to return to health and wholeness.
When right-wing Republicans hear such talk as this they usually respond with the term, “bleeding heart.” Just for your information, the most obvious bleeding heart in history was a man called Jesus. He opposed punishment, he promoted health and wholeness.
But most important, the right wingers who are so deeply dedicated to money, they should be for any program that would not only save money immediately, but would save tons of money over the long haul. With the aid of the federal government, the states could begin the renovation of our criminal justice system commencing in 2008. We have no choice. We must reform the reformatories of this country.
I believe we should immediately remove all those who are locked up in prisons but are in no way harmful to themselves or others back to their community of origin in a half way house type facility that will allow them to work, make a living, to be trained for a real job if they lack the skills now.
All those who are in penal facilities for minor drug related crimes, should be among the first to be transferred.
Marijuana should be decriminalized immediately, in fact, most drugs should be criminalized. Only the dealers, only those who sell and distribute should be sentenced to incarceration in a state facility, but again in a half way house where they can be monitored, but where they can continue to earn a living that will reduce the strain on the government’s budget.
Slowly but surely, the prison population should be reduced to the point where only those who remain a danger to themselves or others would remain incarcerated.
America has more of its citizens in prison than any other civilized nation. That, my friends, is a crime in and of itself. And tells us that because of the push by the right wing Republicans and some antiquated Democrats, in order to win some cheap votes, stiffened the laws and the sentences for those who broke those laws.
That was a terrible mistake. Clinton’s three strikes and your out was another major blunder and demonstrates a clear message that when in comes to crime, we have no idea how we can permanently reduce crime.
Much crime results from economic disparity. Give a person a job and a salary sufficient to care for the family, the food, the shelter, etc. and crime will dissipate like melting snow on a warm day.
We spend too much time on punishment and now enough on rehabilitation. We spend too much time on superficial causes and not enough on the root causes of dysfunctional persons and families.
I, for one, am not willing to spend 50,000 or more to keep our criminals locked up in prisons. It is bad business. In fact, it is very bad business that is costing far more than the benefits derived.
3:40:33 PM 
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