Pubdate: Mon, 26 May 2003 Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI) Copyright: 2003 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Contact: http://www.jsonline.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/265 [Sidebar: Deborah Peterson Small Takes Five The Drug Policy Alliance is a national organization in New York and Washington, D.C., that works to promote drug policies based on common sense, science, public health and human rights. DEBORAH PETERSON SMALL is director of public policy and community outreach for the alliance. A native New Yorker, Small believes that many of the nation's drug laws have had a discriminatory impact on minority communities, and her organization is working to reform laws that warehouse non-violent drug offenders in prison instead of getting them into drug treatment. Small is a graduate of the City College of New York and Harvard Law School. Before assuming her current position at the Drug Policy Alliance, she was legislative director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Small is helping to organize a regional conference on reforming drug laws, which is June 6 and 7 at the Racine Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 7111 W. Washington Ave. The "Breaking the Chains" conference is being sponsored by WISDOM, a statewide interfaith organization of 125 congregations. Small talked with Journal Sentinel urban affairs reporter Leonard Sykes Jr. while in Milwaukee.] TAKING A HARD LOOK AT HARD TIME FOR DRUGS Q. How do you make the point to legislators and the public that drug laws need reforming? A. It really has to do with the ways in which we as a country deal with crime and punishment, which in my view is in an extreme punitive way in comparison to other societies. We have a long-standing tradition of using extreme punishment as a way of behavior modification. If you think about it, from a society point of view, incarcerating drug offenders is stupid. The problem they have never gets addressed in the criminal justice system. And they just keep coming back. I believe those laws are doing what they were designed to do, which is to continue the systemic marginalization and exclusion of certain groups of people. And our drug laws provide a convenient way for doing that. Q. Particularly on minority communities, wouldn't you say? A. Well, those are the communities I'm talking about. I mean, this country has a long history of using punishment and coercion as a way of modifying the behavior of people of color - whether they're African-American, Latino or Asian. So if you look at our drug laws in that context, then they actually are serving a social function because they're allowing us to continue to criminalize, marginalize and exclude large numbers of people of color based on activity that they engage in that isn't significantly different than the activity of the larger community. Q. Wouldn't you say that many of the nation's drug laws are draconian and haven't really addressed the societal causes of drug addiction? A. I think they're draconian in the sense that we don't have a sense of proportion when it comes to sentencing. To give someone a 10- or 15- or 20-year sentence for having brought or possessed a small amount of drugs is considered in much of the rest of the world draconian but not here because we still have the death penalty. Q. What's the difference in sentencing between the U.S. and Europe? A. In Europe, for instance, a five-year sentence is considered a long sentence, and it's usually only given for violent crimes. People would never get that kind of sentence for non-violent activities, whether it involves drug or property crimes. And yet our sentencing structure does that, in part, because it allows us to do what it is we're trying to do, which is to keep people out of society for long periods of time. Giving someone a five-or 15-year sentence does nothing to deal with their underlying addiction problem or any other problems they may have which brought them to abusing drugs in the first place. Q. You and I can talk to each other about this and agree, but how do you get the John Ashcrofts and George Bushes of the world to understand that point of view? A. I've given up on Ashcroft. I don't expect that there is really any hope for him. But I do think that Bush understands the concept of rehabilitation. He understands what it means for a person to overcome addiction because he did that with respect to alcohol. The problem with Bush is that like a lot of people, he's found religion - and I don't mean in the denominational way. He assumes that because it happened for him, it can happen for other people. But the reality is, addiction is a brain disease. And most people spend a lifetime recovering. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart