In this Issue:

Commentary: Drugs, Prisons & Jesus
1 in 136 Residents in Jail: US prisons grew by 1,000 inmates per week last year
8 Steps to Controlling Drug Abuse: New ideas to save lives
Prison & The War on Drugs: Just Say ‘No’

Commentary: Drugs, Prisons & Jesus
by Rev. Michael S. Piazza

Bill Clinton said that he smoked pot, but he didn’t inhale. That admission got lots of laughs, though I doubt that was what he intended. What is not a laughing matter is this country’s current drug policy. I read today that one of every 136 Americans is behind bars (see article below). That is outrageous. We imprison more citizens than all of the other Western nations combined. We are also the only Western nation that continues to allow state-sanctioned killing (executions).

There are a number of issues here that should concern us. The one I ask you to think about today is how we are treating non-violent drug offenses.

A couple of years ago, someone off-handedly wrote and distributed an email in which she talked about drug use that she alleged took place at a large gathering at my home. I was outraged by the callused stupidity of such an unsubstantiated and, I believe, utterly false accusation. At a public Board meeting I said to this woman, who was a physician, “I have never used an illegal drug in my life. Can you say the same?” Given the tone of my voice and the anger in my face, she was wise enough to remain silent. It is true though. I became a pastor at the age of 19, and tequila is the strongest drug I have ever taken. Still, I began to wonder what might have happened if the irresponsible rumor this woman was spreading had been true. She had damaged my reputation, but what might have happened if, unbeknownst to me, someone actually had been using drugs in my house? What would happen to my life if the police had raided my home and arrests were made? Could I ever clear my name? Would I end up in jail? How would I make a living? What would happen to my family? My children?

We are filling our prisons with women and men who have made mistakes, or become addicted, or done something stupid to damage their body. I am not talking about dealers or those who commit violent or property crimes because of drugs. I am talking about those who use an illegal drug rather than a legal one (alcohol). Given the current “three strikes” policy in so many states, addicts are routinely sentenced to life in prison because of their addiction.

Having served as a clinical chaplain in a state mental health hospital, I have seen firsthand the ravages of addiction. I know that treatment is neither cheap nor easy. However, neither is prison. The difference is that with one option, at least, there is hope. People have gotten sober and gone on to lead productive lives. Prison rarely has that effect on a soul, yet we are locking up more than 1,000 people every day. Is this making us safer? The violent crime rate in this country is highest in southern states where the highest number of citizens are in prison. Texas has the fifth highest incarceration rate and executes more people than almost any nation on earth. Still, Dallas has the highest murder rate in the country. What we are doing is clearly NOT working.

So, what would Jesus do? What we know is that he spent the energy of his life healing, helping and delivering, not punishing. Could we reduce crime and lower the prison population by following the model of Jesus? I guess we’ll never know unless we try. One thing that we do know is that what we are doing is not helping anyone, and it is not making us safer.

1 in 136 U.S. Residents Behind Bars
U.S. Prisons, Jails Grew by 1,000 Inmates a Week From '04 to '05
by Elizabeth White
Originally published by the Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.

The total on June 30, 2005, was 56,428 more than at the same time in 2004, the government reported Sunday. That 2.6 percent increase from mid-2004 to mid-2005 translates into a weekly rise of 1,085 inmates.

Of particular note was the gain of 33,539 inmates in jails, the largest increase since 1997, researcher Allen J. Beck said. That was a 4.7 percent growth rate, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in people held in state and federal prisons.

Prisons accounted for about two-thirds of all inmates, or 1.4 million, while the other third, nearly 750,000, were in local jails, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Beck, the bureau's chief of corrections statistics, said the increase in the number of people in the 3,365 local jails is due partly to their changing role. Jails often hold inmates for state or federal systems, as well as people who have yet to begin serving a sentence.

"The jail population is increasingly unconvicted," Beck said. "Judges are perhaps more reluctant to release people pretrial."

The report by the Justice Department agency found that 62 percent of people in jails have not been convicted, meaning many of them are awaiting trial.

Overall, 738 people were locked up for every 100,000 residents, compared with a rate of 725 at mid-2004. The states with the highest rates were Louisiana and Georgia, with more than 1 percent of their populations in prison or jail. Rounding out the top five were Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

The states with the lowest rates were Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire.

Men were 10 times to 11 times more likely than women to be in prison or jail, but the number of women behind bars was growing at a faster rate, said Paige M. Harrison, the report's other author.

The racial makeup of inmates changed little in recent years, Beck said. In the 25-29 age group, an estimated 11.9 percent of black men were in prison or jails, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males.

Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, which supports alternatives to prison, said the incarceration rates for blacks were troubling.

"It's not a sign of a healthy community when we've come to use incarceration at such rates," he said.

Mauer also criticized sentencing guidelines, which he said remove judges' discretion, and said arrests for drug and parole violations swell prisons.

"If we want to see the prison population reduced, we need a much more comprehensive approach to sentencing and drug policy," he said.

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8 Steps to Controlling Drug Abuse and the Drug Market
New Ideas to Save Lives
Originally published by Common Sense for Drug Policy

For decades the United States has been fighting a losing war against drugs. While budgets have increased dramatically over the last two decades and drug-related incarcerations consistently reach new records, drug problems worsen. Adolescent drug abuse is increasing, overdose deaths are at record levels, heroin and cocaine are cheaper, more pure and more available, and health problems related to drugs, especially the spread of HIV/AIDS, are mounting, while an expensive and ineffective international counter narcotics policy entails growing human rights and environmental costs. Drug problems can be reduced at less cost if we change course and adopt strategies that work. The federal budget is limited, but programs need to be re-evaluated and funding needs to go to programs that work. We need new ideas to save lives – we can't afford to continue to be wrong. Below are eight steps that are effective methods of controlling drugs and reducing drug-related harms.

1. Shift Resources Into Programs That Work: US drug control strategy has been approached primarily as a law enforcement issue. Police have done their jobs with record arrests, drug seizures and record incarceration of drug offenders yet drug problems continue to worsen. Expensive eradication and interdiction campaigns abroad have brought few results and many costs. Yet, two-thirds of the federal drug control budget continues to go to interdiction and law enforcement programs while treatment, prevention, research and education divide the remaining federal drug budget. Government needs to accept that the law enforcement paradigm will never work and shift to treating drug abuse as a health problem with social and economic implications and therefore the solutions are in public health approaches that focuses on addicts and abusers – not all users, social services to reduce many of the root causes of abuse and economic strategies to develop alternative markets as well as control drug markets. The federal drug budget should recognize this by shifting resources to prevention, treatment and education.

2. Make Treatment Available on Request Like Any Other Health Service: Making treatment services widely available undermines the drug market and reduces the harms from drug abuse. Treatment needs to be defined broadly to not only include abstinence-based treatment but also easier access to methadone and other alternative maintenance drugs. In addition providing mental health treatment, as well as sex abuse, spousal abuse and child abuse services to face the underlying causes of addiction. Treatment also needs to be userfriendly, i.e. designed to meet the needs of special populations, especially, women, children and minorities. Finally, it needs to be focused on abusers and addicts not all drug users. The best way to accomplish this distinction is to allow people who need treatment to choose it, rather than police choosing treatment for people who happen to get caught.

3. Prevent Drug Abuse By Investing in American Youth and Providing Them with Accurate Information: The most effective way to prevent adolescent drug abuse is to invest in youth and keep them interested and involved in life. Government should increase funding for after school programs, mentor programs, skills building and job training programs and summer jobs for youth. The Higher Education Act provisions denying college aid to students convicted of drug offenses should be repealed, as barriers to education and employment are counterproductive to preventing drug abuse. Education needs to be fact-based, accurate and taught by trained educators and health professionals, not by police. Resources should be shifted from ineffective programs like the ONDCP media campaign and the DARE program to research to develop a more effective drug education approach and toward programs to keep youth active.

4. Focus Law Enforcement Resources on the Most Dangerous and Violent Criminals: Half of drug arrests in the United States are for marijuana offenses and possession cases. Low-level, non-violent drug offenders are dominating police time, wasting the time of courts and filling US prisons. The drug war fuels the record breaking over two million prisoner incarceration level in the US. Arrest and incarceration have a devastating impact on individuals and families. The focus of the federal government in drug enforcement should be large cases that cross international and state boundaries. Smaller cases that are intra state should be left to the states. Drug users and small dealers, who essentially deal to support their habit, should be given the choice of treatment instead of prison. Non-violent offenders should be the lowest law enforcement priority. Urge all prison systems in the U.S. to be less restrictive in granting parole to bona fide nonviolent drug prisoners at review time, less restrictive in granting compassionate release and less restrictive in allowing family visits. These modest changes would give prisoners a motive for good behavior to earn their way out of prison and back to their families and communities.

5. International Drug Control Efforts Should Be Demilitarized and Focus on Economic Development: Focus international drug control efforts on economic development to undermine the incentives for producing drugs, and rely on civilian institutions, not militaries, for eradication and interdiction. Get serious about development initiatives for drug-producing regions, with community-based programs, including attention to marketing so farmers have real choices. Stop all aerial fumigation programs, with their unacceptable environmental and human costs. Channel law enforcement aid where it belongs, through police and other civilian institutions, not the military. Pay attention to human rights concerns in all international drug control programs. Recognize that reducing demand at home is the most effective international strategy because as long as there is a demand, supply will develop.

6. Restore Justice to the US Justice System: Drug enforcement is racially unfair at every stage of the justice system. Profiling of communities and individuals by police and prosecutorial discretion consistently favors whites. Disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing has a racially unfair impact. False testimony by police to justify searches and convict suspects is too widespread. To restore justice acknowledge the racial unfairness, document it and make it illegal; return sentencing discretion to federal judges by repealing mandatory minimum sentencing and making the Sentencing Guidelines discretionary. End the disparity in crack and powder sentencing by reducing crack sentences to the same as cocaine powder.

7. Respect State’s Rights and Allow New Approaches to Be Tried: The Federal government should work with states that have voted fourteen times for reform measures over the last three election cycles. Reforms have included treatment instead of prison, medical use of marijuana, marijuana decriminalization and stopping abuse of forfeiture laws. The federal government has opposed many of these reforms and taken steps to block them from being implemented. But, the states are laboratories for new approaches that should be tried and, if effective, duplicated in other parts of the United States.

8. Make Prevention of HIV and Other Blood Borne Diseases a Top Priority: HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis-C and other blood borne diseases are rapidly spread through the sharing of contaminated syringes. Needle exchange and syringe deregulation have been shown to be effective ways to reduce the spread of disease without increasing drug abuse. Indeed, these services often lead to reductions in drug abuse by getting hard-core
users into treatment.

Related Links
Common Sense for Drug Policy

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Prison & the War on Drugs: Just Say No
by Glenn Greenwald
Originally published by http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com

“Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigor of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.”
- Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

While the War on Terror (or "The Long War") preoccupies the nation, there's another war on an abstract noun ("The Other Long War") that continues to be fought against Americans: The War on Drugs. That war’s central weapon is prison, but the enemy is not the select substances on which the war is ostensibly declared. Rather, the guns are aimed at -- often enough, literally -- every citizen who acts as if the individual, as opposed to the state, should be deciding what to put into his or her body. The human costs of this “war” on citizens have been incalculable, primarily because of prison.

While the United States constitutes 5% of the world's population, this “land of the free” holds 25% of the world's prisoners – a third to a half are there for drug offenses . With all the talk of Guantanamo and extraordinary rendition, many overlook that we have a Gulag Prison System here at home, fueled by our drug laws.

Most Americans seldom think about or discuss penal policies in any systematic or focused way. That failure is itself a poltical/ethical crime, because prison and its uses is a consummately moral issue. Sentencing citizens to prison entails sending armed agents of the state after them, then placing them at the tender mercies of scalp-seeking prosecutors, and if convicted, locking them in cages and robbing them of their autonomy.

For us to collectively decide that the consensual, adult use or sale of intoxicants will be criminalized, means we are agreeing that hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans will experience life-destroying calamity. These POWs will be ripped from their communities -- and frequently from their children -- for years, decades and for life, pursuant to mandatory sentencing schemes as Draconian as those in any dictatorship; how else to characterize putting, e.g., non-violent, vegetarian 23-year-olds in prison for life for selling LSD at Grateful Dead concerts? (It is some small measure of progress that in New York, they recently did away with the life sentences for drug offenders.)

Instead of being with their families, these citizens will be confined among a population teeming with violent predators, under harsh and terrifying conditions. Conditions in which, especially for the disabled, their health often cannot be maintained, as this shameful example shows, as does the case of Lillie Blevins, a non-violent woman who died while serving her life sentence for conspiracy to sell crack cocaine.

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