Prop. 47 would ease sentences in most possession cases; critics say it removes incentive to get clean A hypothetical: One methamphetamine addict is ordered by a judge to complete drug treatment or face time in prison. Another is offered the chance to enter treatment voluntarily. Which one has a better chance of success? That's the central question in the debate over Proposition 47 on the Nov. 4 ballot. It asks voters to lower six nonviolent crimes - including simple drug possession - to misdemeanors, which are punishable by no more than a year in jail. [continues 1343 words]
Even before Dane County Circuit Judge Sarah O'Brien crunched the numbers, she knew something was amiss. Her strongest evidence: "The courtroom didn't look right when I walked in." O'Brien, who retired in 2012, was referring to the stark racial disparities in Dane County's drug court. The people in front of her - the ones who had gotten the chance to reduce or avoid criminal convictions in exchange for completing treatment and other programming - - were overwhelmingly white. In 2012, about one-third of those arrested for drug crimes in Dane County were black, according to the state Office of Justice Assistance. But African-Americans made up just 10 percent of those participating in the county's drug court that year, according to Journey Mental Health, a Madison nonprofit that provides treatment and case management for the program. [continues 1062 words]
Washington Think Tank Says Small Changes to Virginia Laws Could Make Big Differences Virginia's justice system is too expensive, ineffective, unfair and headed for a crisis, according to a policy brief released Wednesday by the Justice Policy Institute. "Despite some recent small progress in the areas of post-incarceration re-entry, particularly felony disenfranchisement, the state continues to suffer under misguided policies and practices of the past," the study concludes. Reaction from state officials was not immediately available Wednesday. The Justice Policy Institute is a liberal think tank based in Washington. [continues 587 words]
Mass Incarceration Reaches Epic Proportions in 'The Land of the Free' There are certain statistics that should make people gasp with horror and seethe with outrage. Here is one of those numbers: 716. Why that figure in particular? Because it represents the number of people per 100,000 who are behind bars in the United States. To even begin to understand the full, tragic significance of what that number represents, it has to be put in context. It is not enough to know that America, the supposed freedom-loving nation that we are, leads the world when it comes to the rate of incarceration. Compare that rate to communist Cuba, which jails 510 people per 100,000, or Iraq, where the number is 115. Or how about Germany, where the number is 80 prisoners per 100,000 people, or Finland, where it is only 60. [continues 1014 words]
Canadians can point to many decisions made by politicians that have used taxpayers' money with little or no resulting benefit. B.C.'s fast ferries debacle of the 1990s cost provincial taxpayers more than $400-million. Montreal's Mirabel Airport was dubbed "one of the great white elephants of aeronautics history" by The New York Times. Bill C-10, dubbed the Safe Streets and Communities Act, which the federal government passed on Monday, could potentially waste billions of Canadian taxpayer dollars. At a time when promised corporate tax reductions have been shelved in B.C., and with Ontario actively considering cancellation of its own planned corporate tax cut, businesses big and small, together with their associations and representatives, should be very concerned. [continues 1152 words]
King County's Drug Courts Are Successful, So Why Are DC Progressives Against Them? It started earlier this year in the big-brain-filled halls of a couple of liberal think tanks in Washington, DC: a campaign against drug courts. Once seen by progressives as a powerful answer to the war on drugs--a way to get addicts into treatment instead of prison, while also saving taxpayers money--these touchy-feely, health-focused courts have now become part of the problem, according to certain leading liberal minds in the nation's capital. (Never mind that some of those same leading liberal minds once supported the creation of drug courts.) [continues 967 words]
YES: Done right, drug courts lower recidivism and cut costs. Georgia's drug courts are positioned to become a model of effective, evidence-based interventions for the Southeast and the nation. Drug courts keep people clean and in treatment longer than other treatment programs. Staying in treatment leads to better outcomes. Drug courts also reduce recidivism and save money. A state audit report released last year found that Georgia's drug court participants have significantly lower recidivism rates than drug offenders who serve prison time and cost millions of dollars less than prison. The report recommended the expanded use of drug courts. [continues 1110 words]
States should seek alternatives to drug courts for addicts, but if they can't, they should use New Jersey's program as model, according to two reports released today by watchdog groups. Drug courts in most states, the reports said, tend to "cherry pick" participants they feel will do best in the program, such as recreational users, and not necessarily select those who need help the most. New Jersey's drug courts, which started experimentally in 1996 and expanded to all 21 counties by 2002, focus on the more difficult cases, a model that serves well for other states, said Nastassia Walsh, a researcher for the Justice Policy Institute who authored "Addicted to Courts: How a Growing Dependence on Drug Courts Impacts People and Communities." [continues 313 words]
State legislators who must spend much of their time this session patching painful employment security and budget issues, have been presented with a bill aimed at doing much more than fixing mistakes. The Omnibus Crime Reduction and Sentencing Reform Act could ultimately save the state money and heartache by classifying more criminal offenses as violent; giving some nonviolent offenders probation instead of prison time; and giving probation and parole officers more help. Proponents are hopeful that the bill, which offers 24 recommendations, will be considered as a whole. They say that is how it would be most effective. [continues 312 words]
Squeezed by the pressures of a federal lawsuit and a crushing budget deficit, California must finally face the reality of its ineffective, bloated prison system. State leaders must reduce the prison population by about 40,000 people, still leaving more than 130,000 in prison. The question is: Can this be done in a way that protects public safety? Yes. But to do this, the state must provide the people leaving prison with treatment and services, and it must invest in programs and strategies proven to create opportunities and build communities. [continues 410 words]
Will the Obama Administration Put Justice Back in the Criminal Justice System? President Obama faces a heap of crises: a major economic recession, crumbling national infrastructure, and ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Buried in that heap is another war, one less present in public discourse but no less toxic: the drug war. The concentrated battleground of the drug war has been on domestic soil, with America's so-called interdiction efforts spreading the fight across the world, from poppy-rich Afghanistan to the coca-nurturing Andes to the most brutal battlefield of them all, Mexico, which saw more than 5,600 drug-related murders last year, including several that involved publicly displayed decapitations [continues 3100 words]
As an advocate for people seeking recovery from alcohol and drug abuse, I feel compelled to lend my support to Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act of 2008, also known as NORA. The focus of this proposition is "treatment vs. incarceration" for nonviolent offenders, and if passed by the voters of California would make substantial changes in how we deal with nonviolent offenders and would provide much needed funds to carry out those changes -- resulting in reduced prison populations and increased treatment opportunities. [continues 552 words]
Editor - I am very disappointed that The Chronicle has suggested voting "no" on Proposition 5. The justifications that are provided for this ignorant recommendation are based on antiquated, anti-science punitive attitudes that have failed our society. Drug prohibition is both a humanitarian and fiscal failure. We need to look at a commonsense approach, depending on the substance, that includes legalization, decriminalization and "medicalization," similar to what many other civilized countries are doing. Feeding low-level offenders to the bloated, unaccountable harmful monstrosity known as the Prison Industrial Complex is not working. Roughly 1 out of 5 people in California have a record and according to the Justice Policy Institute, we incarcerate more people for non-violent drug offenses in the United States than the European Union does for all offenses combined - and the EU has a 100 million more people. [continues 53 words]
The war on drugs has gotten little traction during this presidential campaign. The last time it was even mentioned was during the Republican debate in September 2007 at Morgan State University in Baltimore, when Republican candidate Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) spoke of its inordinate toll on the black community. "I think inner-city folks and minorities are punished unfairly in the war on drugs," Paul had said. "For instance, blacks make up 14 percent of those who use drugs, yet 36 percent of those arrested are blacks and it ends up that 63 percent of those who finally end up in prison are blacks. This has to change." [continues 640 words]
WAR AND RACE dominate the presidential campaign, but one nation-shaping war with profound racial consequences eludes the political radar: the drug war. I was a frontline soldier in this self-perpetuating, ineffectual effort that has swallowed more than a trillion tax dollars and currently yields nearly 2 million arrests every year for nonviolent offenses. I helped incarcerate some 1,000 young people as part of this irredeemably wrongheaded attempt to arrest our way out of our drug problems. Those arrests will follow them to their graves. [continues 612 words]
Group Says It Reported Incorrect Prison Rates For Blacks, Whites A Washington-based advocacy group reported last December that Forsyth County led the nation's largest counties in having the widest disparity in the rate at which blacks and whites go to prison on drug-related charges. The disparity remains, with more blacks going to prison on drug charges than whites, but the national disparity isn't as wide as originally reported by the Justice Policy Institute. And it also turns out that Forsyth County does not have the widest disparity in the nation. [continues 444 words]
Given the nature and cost of the war on drugs - to the state, to the counties and the cities, to families, to businesses, to neighborhoods, to property values and insurance rates - nothing in the realm of criminal justice screams for more reform than our approach to drug addiction and related criminality. In some way - directly, or through taxation, or in the costs of insurance for homes and motor vehicles - drug addiction touches the lives of every man, woman and child in Maryland. The same is true on a national scale. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain should all have plans for changing the country's current policies in two wars: the one in Iraq and the one on drugs. Both were launched on bad information, both have gone on longer than anticipated, and both have proved far too costly. [continues 797 words]
What case doesn't have to do with drugs?" a District Court judge said, suggesting that all crimes alleged on his daily docket are in some way related to heroin or cocaine addiction. "So much money is wasted because it's not [politically correct] to advocate for drug treatment instead of prison time," said another jurist. "Politicians want to look tough. But almost everyone we see needs treatment - almost every prostitution, possession and trespassing case." No one in the room dismissed either statement as exaggeration. [continues 901 words]
As one who has written extensively on disparities in the criminal justice system, I am familiar with assorted statistics associated with selective prosecution. The Justice Policy Institute recently released a comprehensive study on the issues of race, poverty, unemployment and selective prosecution within the context of the so-called war on drugs. The report's conclusion was blunt: "The drug war is primarily being waged against African American citizens of our local jurisdictions, despite solid evidence that they are no more likely than their white counterparts to be engaged in drug use or drug delivery behaviors." [continues 710 words]
King baiting is rampant these days. King-baiting? I'm talking about the tried and true practice of invoking the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s name whenever someone wants to curry favor, assuage anger, rebut arguments or influence decisions by African-Americans. Regardless of political persuasion, King-baiting has become standard operating procedure in the past few years. Today, on the national holiday on which we honor the civil-rights icon, let's talk honestly about King-baiting. For instance, when the media reported "allegedly racist" comments about blacks and welfare in his newsletter, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee responded, "Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks were my heroes." End of discussion. [continues 699 words]
