| CRIMINAL
LAW
6/20/03 <link>
U.S.
incarceration rate of Blacks egregious
Cynthia Tucker points out some very disturbing facts:
"...the
criminal justice policies of the past 20 years or so have incarcerated
not only vicious predators but also countless nonviolent offenders,
including drug offenders, who might easily be rehabilitated through
cheaper alternative sentencing options.
Locking up nonviolent offenders for long stretches has not made the
streets safer. Instead, it has drained public coffers while producing
a new class of violent thugs. Nonviolent offenders locked away with
hardened criminals are likely to end their prison stretches, if they
survive them, as hardened criminals themselves.
And because the criminal justice system is not yet colorblind, the
harsh justice of the last several years has also devastated black
America. Drug prosecutions, especially, have targeted blacks.
"Blacks are arrested and confined in numbers grossly out of line
with their use or sale of drugs," Michael Tonry, criminal justice
expert and author of "Malign Neglect: Race, Crime and Punishment
in America," wrote in 1995.
Just one example is the horrendous miscarriage of justice in Tulia,
Texas, where several blacks, caught in a series of drug arrests in
1999, were sent to prison based on the false testimony of an
unreliable, racist law enforcement officer, Tom Coleman. Coleman
eventually conceded that he never wore a recorder, never used video
surveillance and never asked a partner to accompany him. He also
admitted that he routinely used racial epithets.
Still, judges and prosecutors were persuaded by his thin and
uncorroborated evidence. Now, the state is moving to overturn the
convictions of dozens of defendants.
While Tulia is unusual for its obvious law enforcement misconduct,
blacks routinely receive a harsher justice than whites. A white
drug offender convicted for the first time would be more likely to get
probation than a black defendant guilty of the same offense, research
shows.
As a result, one-third of black men between 20 and 34 are behind bars,
according to Allen Beck, chief prison demographer for the federal
Bureau of Justice Statistics. And that stunning statistic minimizes
the overall blow: Nearly 30 percent of black men will be incarcerated
during their lives, Beck said [our emphasis].
This -- and the AIDS (news
- web
sites) epidemic -- are twin catastrophes that are decimating black
America. With so many black men behind bars, there is little hope for
rebuilding the black family structure. And the cycle only repeats
itself in the next generation: Social workers point out that children
with fathers in prison are more likely to grow up poor, drop out of
school, become parents too soon and drift into lives of crime
themselves..."
6/1/03 <link>
U.S.
incarceration rate leads the world!
This is truly an appalling statistic. Here is Scott Shane's article in
the Baltimore Sun:
"...With
a record-setting 2 million people locked up in American jails and
prisons, the United States has overtaken Russia and has a higher
percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country.
Those are the latest dreary milestones resulting from a two-decade
imprisonment boom that experts say has probably helped reduce crime but
has led to ballooning costs and stark racial inequities.
Overseas, U.S. imprisonment policy is widely seen as a blot on a society
that prides itself on valuing liberty.
``Why, in the land of the free, should 2 million men, women and children
be locked up?'' said Andrew Coyle, director of the International Centre
for Prison Studies at the University of London.
The new high of 2,019,234, announced by the Justice Department in April,
underscores the extraordinary scale of American imprisonment compared to
most of the world.
During the 1990s, the United States and Russia -- a far poorer country
emerging from totalitarian rule and beset by official corruption and
organized crime -- vied for the dubious position of the highest
incarceration rate.
But in the past few years, Russian authorities have carried out
large-scale amnesties to ease overcrowding, and the United States has
emerged in first place, at 702 prisoners per 100,000 population. Russia
now has 665 prisoners per 100,000.
Today, the United States imprisons at a far greater rate than not only
developed Western nations but also impoverished and authoritarian
countries. On a per capita basis, according to the best available
figures, the United States has three times as many prisoners as Iran,
four times as many as Poland, five times as many as Tanzania and seven
times as many as Germany.
``This is a pretty serious experiment we've been engaged in,'' said
Vincent Schiraldi, director of the Justice Policy Institute, a
Washington think tank that supports alternatives to prison. ``I don't
think history will judge us kindly.''
Bruce Western, a sociologist at Princeton University, said sentencing
policies have had a glaringly disproportionate impact on black men. The
Justice Department reports that one in eight black men in their 20s and
early 30s were behind bars last year, compared with 1 in 63 white men..."
9/3/02 <link>
Digital photography helping prosecutions of
domestic abuse
Interesting article
in the NY Times. Technology to the rescue!
|
The War on Drugs
<link>
6/30/03 California
once again in the limelight on drug reform
As Nell Bernstein reports in Salon.com,
"...In California, since November 2000, when
voters passed the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act, or
Proposition 36. Under Prop. 36, people convicted of drug possession are
automatically steered to rehab rather than to jail. They still report to
a probation officer, and the stick of incarceration hovers over their
heads should they rack up three "treatment failures." But the
state has effectively shifted its philosophy for dealing with drug
offenders, replacing a harshly punitive response with an offer of
recovery.
When Prop. 36 became law, it looked like an anomaly in a nation that had
recently surpassed Russia as the world's most prolific jailer. But that
was before the economy tanked, tax revenues plummeted, and state
governments were confronted with the worst budget crisis since World War
II. Today -- after two decades of overheated anti-drug rhetoric and
skyrocketing prison populations -- prison spending is losing its
sacred-cow status, and compromises like Prop. 36 are gaining appeal.
The California measure is still considered an experiment, one that
breaks down and even fails from time to time. Cases of ineffective
treatment, tangled bureaucracy, and scamming by users in the program
have tainted glowing reviews, but so far, the results are encouraging
enough: More drug users are getting clean than under the old regime; the
population of drug users behind bars for possession is diminishing (by
30 percent in 2001); the state is saving money ($95 million in the first
year); and thousands of children are being spared the trauma
of parental incarceration...."
9/20/02 Some
more results from the war on drugs
More than 50% of jailed inmates non-violent with no previous narcotics
record, with over 75% being minorities. When we see statistics such as
these we can't help but wonder if the laws against drug use should not
be reviewed more carefully. We are individuals who have never used drugs - and we can't
claim we understand the motivations of drug users. Drug abuse is wrong
and it should be addressed appropriately, with punishment meted out that
is proportionate to the violation. The question is what is
appropriate and proportionate?
As a comparison consider tobacco. We would personally like to see tobacco use and cigarette
smoking banned nationwide, especially since that kills nearly a half a
million people in the U.S. every year and costs ~ $150B (per
the AMA) to the economy. Smoking clearly has a far greater negative impact
- on
the lives of people who smoke as well as on passive "inhalers"
- than drugs like marijuana or cocaine. We find it
particularly offensive when parents smoke in the presence of their
children or mothers smoke while pregnant. We also object to subsidizing the high health costs of smokers by paying
higher health insurance premiums overall. When smoking does some much
economic, health and social damage, how can this industry or practice be
considered anymore "legal" in comparison to marijuana or other
illegal drugs?
9/17/02 More
on the drug war - this time a challenge from California
Santa Cruz, CA, posts a direct challenge to the Bush administration and the
U.S. Supreme Court, on the medicinal marijuana issue.
9/16/02 The
so-called war on drugs
As is well known, it is more a war on the poor drug users than on the
rich drug users, and Arianna Huffington has the latest update for us.
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