Pubdate: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 Source: Observer, The (UK) Copyright: Guardian Media Group plc. 2000 Contact: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ Authors: (1) Lorraine Hewitt (2) Hugh Robertson (3) Robert Merkin (4) Gerald M. Sutliff Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n004/a01.html WHY JUSTICE FAILED BROCK AND WYNER This prosecution against Ruth and John Brock (Comment, last week) was brought and vicious sentences imposed under the 'Premises' section of the Misuse of Drugs Act, which makes it a criminal offence for third parties knowingly to permit heroin or cannabis use in their property. This section was never intended to snare hapless parents, unaware landlords or altruistic social workers and urgently needs revising. Drug use and exchange is common and hard to control in NHS wards, in prisons, in hostels and specialists' services. The majority of senior staff in these disparate settings at some time will have made Ruth Wyner's choice, to impose sanctions but not to report infractions to the police. Indeed for many years it has been seen as good practice for agencies to maintain strategic liaison with local police in return for which the police do not harass them. This judgment unilaterally undermines future co-operation between police and care services. Lorraine Hewitt South London and Maudsley NHS Trust London SW9 - --- The story of Ruth Wyner and John Brock shows one effect of the War on Drugs - the imprisonment of people who do not belong there. If the police and prosecution applied the same logic to this country's prisons, then every prison governor in the country would be up in court for allowing heroin dealing on the premises. Hugh Robertson The Legalise Cannabis Alliance PO Box 198, Norwich - --- The imprisonment of Ruth Wyner and John Brock is a perversion. As a volunteer manager with a church-alliance emergency winter homeless shelter in the United States, any of my colleagues could easily have landed in precisely the same predicament at the bizarre but commonplace whims of our nation's police and prosecutors. What Judge Jonathan Haworth, police and prosecutors have done is fully the moral equivalent of Nazi justice. Every process that led to it - Acts of Parliament and government, methods of appointing judges, the 'tough on drugs/wrong message to our children' posturing for which we robotically re-elect our politicians - is a symptom of a profoundly disturbed society whose most educated have chosen to abandon moral direction. The universal prelude to the American, French, Russian, or the just-accomplished Eastern European revolutions is a regime whose elite systematically manufactures injustice and rigidly enobles it as policy. When our most committed neighbours find themselves enemies of the state, things change abruptly, and those who were Judge Haworths are escorted from the bench to the dock. Robert Merkin Northampton, Massachusetts - --- I no longer believe that the US has the most ruthless drug warriors in the Western world. Even your judges, like ours, are subject to political ambition and lynch-mob mentality. Gerald M. Sutliff Emeryville California - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake