Pubdate: Mon, 17 Dec 2012
Source: Tribune Star (Terre Haute, IN)
Copyright: 2012 Tribune-Star Publishing Co. Inc.
Contact:  http://www.tribstar.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/448
Page: A8

DON'T LET POT SMOKE OBSCURE BIGGER ISSUE

The national buzz over decriminalized marijuana is threatening to 
cast a smoky pall over a vitally important, long-time-coming 
improvement in Indiana's criminal sentencing laws that deserves to 
gain General Assembly approval in 2013.

Don't confuse the limited legalization of pot in Washington state and 
Colorado with what is happening in Indiana.

Instead of making possession of even a small quantity of marijuana 
legal, Indiana is, so far, taking another approach.

Here, an arm of the General Assembly, the Criminal Code Evaluation 
Committee, will put forth recommendations on marijuana possession 
violations as part of a comprehensive balancing of penalties - the 
sentences those convicted of crimes receive. That committee's work, 
some of which stretches back at least three years, is designed to 
better use Indiana's prison capacity and corrections dollars to 
punish the most serious offenses, such as rape, child molesting and 
other violent crimes.

Yes, the Indiana penalty for possession of small quantities of 
marijuana (10 grams or less, 10 to 30 marijuana cigarettes, we're 
told) would be lowered, but reasonably so. Such possession now is a 
misdemeanor that exacts a $5,000 fine and jail time. A second offense 
now becomes a felony with a one-to five-year prison sentence. The 
criminal code committee's proposal would lower the first offense to 
the status of an infraction and a $500 fine; a second offense would 
be a misdemeanor with no more than a year's jail time. Less penalty, 
but not legalization.

Lest you see this as soft on crime, consider that conservative 
Republicans known for law-and-order agendas are at the heart of the 
movement. One is state Rep. Brent Steele, an influential conservative 
from Bedford who has been active in building a bipartisan agreement 
on criminal sentencings.

Steele said it this way to CNHI's statehouse reporter Maureen Hayden 
for a story in September: "You can be tough on crime and still use 
some common sense about how to spend our resources. ... We need to 
lock people up who we're afraid of, not people we're mad at. We might 
be mad at people who are smoking dope, but it's not doing any good to 
keep locking them up."

The state's criminal code was last updated comprehensively in 1977, 
and much has changed in the 35 years since. Now, for instance, 
Indiana has a critical methamphetamine problem that demands great law 
enforcement, prosecutorial, judicial and prison effort and dollars. 
Meth, we have to believe, is much worse a problem than marijuana.

It may be that police agencies would need to adjust their marijuana 
enforcement if the penalties change, so that arrests can better meet 
the seriousness of offenses. For instance, a 2009 study published in 
The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform found that in 2007, 88 percent of 
Indiana's marijuana arrests were for possession (according to FBI 
Uniform Crime Reporting statistics), which means just 12 percent were 
for the arguably worse offense of sales. For the same period, 
marijuana arrests constituted 57 percent of all drug arrests - that 
in an area of growing concerns about more serious crimes.

Also among those more serious crimes, according to that 2009 study, 
are white-collar crimes such as fraud, identity theft and 
embezzlement. "While a great deal of attention is devoted to law 
enforcement responses to street crimes," wrote the study's author, 
Jon Gettman, Ph.D., "the economic impact of these crimes is dwarfed 
by the magnitude of white-collar crime, which is conservatively 
estimated to have an impact of 10 times the value of street crimes."

So, bottom line, is that lesser punishment for small quantities of 
marijuana in Indiana is part of a much larger issue of balancing 
sentences for more serious crimes. The criminal code committee's 
proposals deserve to become law. We hope the real issues don't get 
lost in an acrid smokescreen as the issue is debated.

So, bottom line, is that lesser punishment for small quantities of 
marijuana in Indiana is part of a much larger issue of balancing 
sentences for more serious crimes. The criminal code committee's 
proposals deserve to become law. We hope the real issues don't get 
lost in an acrid smokescreen as the issue is debated.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom