# Don't throw away the key



## Warrigal (May 10, 2015)

Came across this double page article in my Sunday paper today. 
It discusses the effects of the war on drugs, mandatory sentencing and incarceration rates in the US and the call for policy changes from Republican and Democrat leaders.

It's an interesting read and I would be interested in your opinions on the article.

*Don't throw away the key: US changes tack on jailing*

     May 10, 2015        
Nick O'Malley 
US correspondent for Fairfax Media

     On the last Tuesday of April they buried Freddie Gray in a white coffin with gold trim at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Baltimore. Gray was 25 when he died, his neck broken and his voice box crushed in police custody after he had been arrested for making eye contact with a police officer.
Within hours a state of emergency would be in place across the city and ranks of police and soldiers would be confronting both protesters and rioters, as they had in recent months in cities across the United States. That same day in New York an extraordinary book of essays was launched, proving, finally, that the tough-on-crime consensus that helped crowd America's prisons and blight its inner city neighbourhoods – and spurred the street battles waged in Baltimore in the past week – has unravelled.

     The end of an era of mass incarceration in the United States is in sight, and the ramifications of this change are already being felt not only across America but around the world.The book, _Solutions: America's Leaders Speak out on Criminal Justice_, was launched at the Brennan Centre for Justice at the prestigious New York University's law school. Its foreword is written by former president Bill Clinton and it contains essays by Hillary Clinton, other leading Democrats like Vice-President Joe Biden, and Cory Booker, an African-American senator from New Jersey who is considered a future leader. But it also included many of the leading Republican presidential contenders such as Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee. Even firebrands like Ted Cruz and Rick Perry contributed.

Though he did not contribute, the leading Republican presidential candidate, Jeb Bush, has also dramatically softened the zero-tolerance stance of his years as governor of Florida. One of the book's co-editors, Nicole Fortier, said she was surprised at the reception she was given when she contacted these candidates and asked for a contribution. Rather than hesitating, the various leaders jumped at the chance to contribute. Their offices wanted feedback and advice. Some asked if they could have more length. But it was the content of the submissions that stunned her when they began arriving.
Each politician from across the viciously divided American political spectrum agreed that mass incarceration must end.

     This turnaround in political will is extraordinary.

The war on drugs began under President Richard Nixon, but it was Bill Clinton who opened a new front in 1994 after another surge in crime statistics across America. That year he introduced an omnibus crime bill that expanded the death penalty and encouraged states to lengthen prison terms and adopt mandatory sentences. It scrapped funding for inmate education.      As a result of these laws, and other tough measures adopted by federal and state governments, America now has the biggest per capita prison population in the world.

The figures are dizzying.

It locks up one in 100 American adults and has 25 per cent of the world's prison population with just 5 per cent of the world's population. One in 28 children have a parent in prison. Considered together America's prison population would be the size of  its 37th largest state. Half of all offenders are in prison for non-violent offences.

     The Clinton crime bill was, the _Atlantic_ magazine recently noted, backed by every Congressional Democrat but one. In the new book Clinton concedes, "plainly, our nation has too many people in prison and for too long – we have overshot the mark". It is the growing consensus that by incarcerating vast swaths of the urban poor America has broken families, shattered whole communities, increasing the chances of further incarceration.

     In inner cities where crime is highest and police are most needed, police are seen as occupying forces rather than civil servants. They are feared and loathed by the populations that need them most. While America's unemployment rate is rapidly falling, its long-term unemployment remains stubbornly high, in part because employers are reluctant to hire ex-cons. This in turn promotes recidivism. A new campaign to reverse that perverse result has been launched. Called ban the box it calls on employers to pledge not to ask applicants to tick a box if they have a record. Instead, it asks them to ask the question in an interview when the applicant might have a chance to explain their situation.

     What has driven this remarkable change in political will is debatable. The protests on streets in many American cities, now commonly referred to by activists as "uprisings" might have contributed to the urgency of the movement. It is also clear that during the long recession states could no longer afford to keep locking people up, especially when a single inmate cost them as much as a police officer or teacher might each year. Social scientists are now identifying so-called "million-dollar blocks" – those in poor neighbourhoods with collapsing infrastructure, the government is spending $US1 million ($1.3 million) each year locking up residents of single blocks. 

A Columbia University lab identified many such blocks and found that when inmates returned home they could expect to last an average of three years before they would again be jailed. But the overwhelming factor – the factor that makes this an issue that politicians are willing to address – is that there has been an unprecedented collapse in the crime rate. Since the era when Clinton went tough on crime and New York City adopted its infamous "broken windows" zero-tolerance policy, American crime rates have fallen by half.

     One of the more interesting observers of crime and punishment – and policing in particular – in America is Radley Balko, who noted in a recent _Washington Post_ column that people vote on criminal justice issues only when they are in fear, and Americans no longer fear crime as they once did.
"While most people continue to erroneously tell pollsters that crime is getting worse nationwide, on the more pertinent question – whether Americans fear walking alone in their own neighbourhood – the percentage answering yes hasn't been above 40 per cent since the early 1990s." This is because, Balko argues, "in 2013, there were nearly 9000 fewer homicides, about 27,000 fewer rapes, and about 368,000 fewer aggravated assaults than there were in 1991, even though the country's population increased by 64 million people."

Asked if a de-escalation in the war on drugs might see crime levels rise, the Brennan Centre's Nicole Fortier says no. In the book _What Caused the Crime Decline?_ the Brennan Centre found incarceration had a limited and diminishing impact on crime levels, one that had almost become irrelevant by 2000, accounting for just 1 per cent of the decrease. The true cause is layered and complicated, the book argues, and includes increasing incomes and consumer confidence, decreased alcohol consumption, and the better targeting of police resources through the use of statistical analysis of crime patterns.

Another study by the National Academies' National Research Council found that "the growth in incarceration rates reduced crime, but the magnitude of the crime reduction remains highly uncertain and the evidence suggests it was unlikely to have been large". With the panic over crime receding some states have already begun ending the drug war, the crucial contributor to mass incarceration. Many states have decriminalised possession of small amounts of marijuana, while two – Colorado and Washington, as well as the city of Washington, DC, – have taken the extraordinary step of legalising the drug for recreational use.

President Barack Obama, who has made criminal justice reform central to his final years in office, has ordered his Justice Department not to intervene by enforcing federal drug laws.

This turnaround in America's war on drugs is already having an impact on law and order around the world.
Prohibition enforced by strict criminal sanctions was largely an American invention imposed around the world through treaties and diplomatic pressure.
On Thursday the United Nations held a debate at its New York headquarters on the issue at the request of Uruguay, Mexico and Colombia, which argued that as some American states no longer criminalises all drug possession, they should no longer be compelled to wage the American drug war.
They want the treaties rewritten.

The meeting was greeted by a letter from a group of 100 drug policy and human rights organisations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, calling on the UN to reform the way it treats drugs and for member countries to respect those governments that have or will legalise or decriminalise narcotics. 

"Existing US and global drug control policies that heavily emphasise criminalisation of drug use, possession, production and distribution are inconsistent with international human rights standards and have contributed to serious human rights violations," they write. "Criminalisation of the drug trade has dramatically enhanced the profitability of illicit drug markets, fuelling the operations of groups that commit abuses, corrupt authorities, and undermine democracy and the rule of law in many parts of the world."

The groups believe "human rights principles, which lie at the core of the United Nations charter, should take priority over provisions of the drug conventions". Some at the UN already acknowledge the problem. In 2012 the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report finding that "excessively punitive approaches to drug control have resulted in countless human rights violations, including the right to health". The discussions in New York on Thursday were in preparation for the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on Drugs in 2016. The special session was originally scheduled for 2019, but was brought forward due to pressure from Latin American countries, where governments have become increasingly concerned about how the war on drugs has affected crime and development in the region. They believe, as many American policymakers now do, that imprisonment is far more harmful to drug users – and to their communities – than the drugs they are being imprisoned for using.

Whatever happens in the UN next year it now seems certain that whoever wins the 2016 presidential election will continue with efforts to reduce America's prison population, rein back zero-tolerance policies and de-escalate the war on drugs. Though the political leaders who contributed to the Brennan Centre book do not have a common approach on how to achieve this, there are areas of broad agreement, Fortier says. Most agree on the need to steer the mentally ill and non-violent offenders away from prison and that mandatory minimum sentences are destructive and need to be repealed.  Whatever the outcome it will take years to unpick the diabolical confusion of law and regulation that today can still force American judges to steal whole lifetimes from the pettiest offenders.

Back in Baltimore on Thursday the _Baltimore Sun_ told the story of Ronald Hammond, who appeared in a local courtroom in 2011 on a charge of possessing 5.9 grams of marijuana. The district court judge thought the case was preposterous.

"5.9 grams won't roll you a decent joint," Judge Askew Gatewood said. "Why would I want to spend taxpayer's money putting his little raggedy butt in jail – feeding him, clothing him, cable TV, internet, prayer, medical expense, clothing – on $5 worth of weed?"

Gatewood urged Hammond to plead guilty so he could free him on parole. But then it turned out that Hammond was already on parole for selling $40 worth of crack to an undercover officer. With a parole infraction Hammond copped a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years. He is now due for release in 2028, though the current maximum penalty for possession of 10 grams or less is a $100 fine.

He told the _Sun_ that when he heard the sentence, "A chill went from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes."


The US has 5 per cent of the world population, but 25 per cent of its prison population.
Almost one in 100 American adults are in prison.
The US prison population grew by 700 per cent from 1970 to 2005.
 1 in 15 black males aged 18 years or older is incarcerated.
Forty per cent of the prison population is African-American, but only 12 per cent of the general population.
One in 28 children has a parent in prison.
At the current pace, one in three African-American men will spend some time in prison.
Nearly half of state prisoners are locked up for non-violent offences.
The US spends $US260 billion ($330 billion) on criminal justice every year.
Over the last four decades, the US has spent more than $1 trillion on its drug war.
CHANGE OF HEART
"A very small number of people commit a large percentage of serious crimes – and society gains when that relatively small group is behind bars. But some are in prison who shouldn't be, others are in for too long, and without a plan to educate, train, and reintegrate them into our communities, we all suffer." – Former president Bill Clinton

"If the United States brought our correctional expenditures back in line with where they were several decades ago, we'd save an estimated $28 billion a year. And I believe we would not be less safe. You can pay a lot of police officers and nurses and others with $28 billion to help us deal with the pipeline issues." – Former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton (Democrat)

"​You may assume mass incarceration exists because people are committing more crimes. But that is not true. Violent crime has plunged in recent decades; the rate has declined roughly by half since 1993. In fact, numerous studies have shown that incarceration rates cannot be tied to crime rates." – Senator Cory Booker (Democrat,  New Jersey)​

"According to a 2012 Government Accountability Oﬃce report, the inmate population in the federal Bureau of Prisons increased by more than 400 per cent since the late 1980s because of lengthening sentences."  – Senator Ted Cruz (Republican, Texas)

"An Arkansas prison oﬃcial once told me that 88 per cent of incarcerated inmates at his prison were there because of a drug or alcohol problem or because they committed a crime in order to get drunk or high. As he astutely observed, we do not have a crime problem, we have a drug and alcohol problem." – Former governor Mike Huckabee (Republican, Arizona)

"A chorus of judges has lamented the eﬀect of mandatory minimum sentences as 'unjust, cruel, and even irrational'.One judge declared, '[F]airness has departed from the system as a result of these laws."​ – Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky)​

Source: The Brennan Centre's new book of essays _Solutions: American Leaders Speak out on Criminal Justice

http://www.smh.com.au/world/dont-throw-away-the-key-us-changes-tack-on-jailing-20150509-ggwu3x.html_


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## Don M. (May 10, 2015)

The "War on Drugs" is an Absolute Farce!  It has done Nothing to slow down the use of illicit drugs.  One needs only to look at the days of Prohibition, and the attempts to eliminate alcohol use, to realize how current tactics are doomed to failure.  There is No shortage of people who will continue to use these banned substances.  The ONLY sensible solution would be to legalize, control, and tax these substances...much like booze is currently controlled.  The present process just insures that the Mexican drug cartels will continue to get rich, and turn large parts of our cities into zones of Anarchy that are controlled by the street and drug gangs.  

Our prison system, and indeed, our entire Justice system, is Big Business...to the tune of almost 300 billion dollars a year...when you factor in the prisons, courts, police and armies of lawyers who feed off this system.  Many locales are already turning prisons over to private enterprise...which make a huge profit off warehousing thousands of prisoners.  However, given that most of our politicians come from a Lawyer background, and lawyers Always protect other Lawyers, there is little mood in government leadership to kill off this Golden Goose.  

If this nation ever wants to get serious about getting this prison and drug problem under control, we Must put these banned substances under control, via legalization and taxation, and then concentrate the criminal efforts on eliminating those who import and sell these drugs illegally.  Setting up a legal path for acquiring these substances. while clamping down on the drug gangs, would go a long way towards cutting our prison population substantially.  

There is ONE truth that Always applies to people...."You can't Fix Stupid"....and there will Always be that segment of our population that abuses drugs and alcohol.  Merely throwing these kinds of people in prison does Nothing to address the Real Problem.


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## Josiah (May 10, 2015)

I completely agree with Don's reply. This has been talked about for a long time but now it's getting a lot of very serious attention. Of course we haven't heard from the prison guard lobby yet.


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## SeaBreeze (May 10, 2015)

The "war on drugs" is bogus, and involves government corruption, and big business profits while making the US a police state.  Follow the money.


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## WhatInThe (May 10, 2015)

The war on drugs might need a break but the participants in that game who chose to kill, bribe, steal, rob, burglarize, evade taxes etc do not. Drugs is not an ends justify the means game. You want to do drugs fine. You want to commit a crime not fine. You want to get high fine. You want an excuse not to get fired or out of a dui not fine.

Yeh, one gets caught on "possession" maybe it is time to let some slide since we didn't catch their dealer or distributors. But is an "innocent" drug user/abuser really just a 'victim' or innocent. Just doing business with known criminals or committing criminal act tells me something about their character, Does it mean someone shouldn't get a second chance or break of course not. Even the career criminal gets a break on occasion.


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## drifter (May 10, 2015)

I have never been comfortable with the private prison system. I feel this leads to other crimes, the prison lobbying Sheriffs to send their prisoner to a certain private jail. We don't need the criminal justice system to be in private hands. I have long felt the Drug Enforcement Agency has existed long past their usefulness and effectiveness. Too often drug agents get to close to their quarry and get hooked on drugs or they get to taking their jobs too seriously and allow themselves to go over the line to catch a dealer or druggy because of personal reasons rather than professional. The duties of the DEA should be turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the DEA disbanded. Merely shutting down that agency will reduce the criminal statistics. That agency has not earned their pay in several years. And finally our drug laws need to be reformed and we need to quit sending kids to prison for a handful of drugs.


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## Butterfly (May 10, 2015)

Josiah said:


> I completely agree with Don's reply. This has been talked about for a long time but now it's getting a lot of very serious attention. Of course we haven't heard from the prison guard lobby yet.



My husband was a prison guard for several years after retiring from the military.  I can tell you for sure that the "prison guard lobby" would be overjoyed to have less overcrowding in the prisons they guard.  Guards do a very difficult, dangerous and ugly job for not very much money.  They don't like the lousy prison conditions either, and every day they basically put their lives on the line to do their jobs.  Many of the things they have to contend with are unspeakable.


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## 911 (May 11, 2015)

If there was a war on drugs, why didn't we show up for it? For every drug peddler we take off the streets, two more show up. I was never big on throwing people in the can that had small amounts of weed in their possession. Powder, pills and IV solutions, that's a different story and believe me, I have hundreds. Taking down the cartels or even the suppliers to the dealers has become a very expensive, time consuming and life threatening job. 

Even when we would go into the crack houses, unless we did our homework, we could not guarantee that we would come out alive. In a lot of situations, the PSP does the leg work and roots these guys out and then turns it over to the FBI, DEA or ATF. They in turn take down the suppliers using us as backup. The FBI has the armament, funding and all things needed, including specialized SWAT teams and the technology to take them down. I worked in major crimes, including drug enforcement for almost eight years. I saw kids as young as 12 over-dosing on Heroin. It breaks your heart. At one time we were told that drug overdose was the leading reason for accidental deaths in PA. 

I was part of an investigation of a drive by shooting that took the life of a 15 month old baby. A guy living in this house owed his dealer a lot of money and didn't or couldn't pay, so the dealer sent out his messengers to fire a few rounds into his home. Grandma was holding the baby in the living room and they both were killed. A senseless waste of life. After begging people to come forward with information, we finally make an arrest. Two of the suspects stood trial together. I never saw two guys that couldn't have cared less, even after they were found guilty of all charges and the judge gave them an immediate sentence of 99 years, plus another 20 for kidnapping. After they shot the house up, they went in and grabbed the mother of the baby and dropped her off about 10 blocks away because they said they didn't know what they were going to with her.   

I was part of a sting operation that worked in cooperation with the FBI that took down two suppliers next door to each other in Philadelphia on the same day and time. We netted over two million in cash and another 2-3 million in Heroin. That was my biggest drug bust. It was scary. Those dudes play for keeps. They guard their stash like a mother lion guarding her cubs. And you know what? Two million to these guys is chicken scratch. It's like, "So what?"


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## Don M. (May 11, 2015)

I would venture that if a person went through the data on the FBI and DOJ web sites, they would find that 75% of the murders and shootings are drug gang related.  I would also suspect that half, or more. of the burglaries and property crimes are committed by addicts trying to fund their next "fix".  If there is a War on Drugs, we are losing it...Big Time.


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## SeaBreeze (May 13, 2015)

This is the war on drugs that's really needed in America, but won't happen because it wouldn't just have a negative affect on the citizen who buys a bag of weed to get high on with his friends, it would have a negative effect on the fat cats who run the government and the big pharmaceutical corporations, who are in bed with each other.  Once again....follow the money. 

 Americans pop so many pills everyday, it's insane.  The doctors get their script pads out early on for young children who are just behaving like kids, and begin them on their journey with mood affecting and brain altering drugs that cause both homicide and suicide. The doses increase, and other drugs are introduced when the original one is no longer "working", then of course they will be on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills in their adult life, what a racket!!  You won't hear about the drugs we really need a war on here in this country, because these big corporations that profit by selling all these pharmaceuticals, and dreaming up new ones with a laundry list of serious side effects, control the media too...how convenient, for everyone but the average citizen.

Are some prescription drugs needed to treat people with serious illnesses sometimes, absolutely!  Are drugs too often prescribed in a careless manner just to rake in the profits from drug sales, absolutely!


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## QuickSilver (May 13, 2015)

Butterfly said:


> My husband was a prison guard for several years after retiring from the military.  I can tell you for sure that the "prison guard lobby" would be overjoyed to have less overcrowding in the prisons they guard.  Guards do a very difficult, dangerous and ugly job for not very much money.  They don't like the lousy prison conditions either, and every day they basically put their lives on the line to do their jobs.  Many of the things they have to contend with are unspeakable.



The Guards may feel that way.. but the CEOs of the Corporations that run the prisons for profit wouldn't want a decrease in prisoners.  That's were they make their money.   Why do you think we have mandatory sentencing with longer and longer sentences for minor drug crime?  To keep the prisons full...


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## 911 (May 13, 2015)

SB---Read my post. I stated the same as this good man has. Drug over-dose in PA is the leading cause of accidental deaths. Pharmacies in some states have gone to a data base, so that they may track how many pills a patient is receiving. I am not sure if it is a national data base or a state data base. I think that a lot of us are aware that pain pill distribution in this country is out of control. I have seen so many users that could not get enough pills from their doctor, so they try and most succeed buying more off of the street. They self-medicate to the point that they OD. Always after that euphoric rush. Some addicts want to quit, but their body has become so addicted to the morphine that they will withdrawal without it. Withdrawals are hell for the user and they do whatever is necessary to avoid them. 

Some addicts continue up the ladder from pain pills and getting hooked on Cocaine to Heroin to Fentanyl and so on. Dilauded is also another popular drug among addicts. One thing is for certain, the Meth clinics are doing well.


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## QuickSilver (May 13, 2015)

When you realize that some states have mandatory sentencing of 20-30 years for the possession of as little as $25 worth of marijuana.. you can see that this is contributing to the overcrowding of our prison systems.


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## QuickSilver (May 13, 2015)




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## Don M. (May 13, 2015)

"Are some prescription drugs needed to treat people with serious illnesses sometimes, absolutely!  Are drugs too often prescribed in a careless manner just to rake in the profits from drug sales, absolutely!"

Our Entire Health Care System is dedicated to "Treatment"....with very little effort directed towards "Prevention".  That's easy to understand, as Treatment is far more profitable than Prevention.  About the closest thing we ever see to Prevention is the Stop Smoking campaigns.  Half our population is slovenly Fat, and millions of people practice poor dietary habits, and get very little in the way of exercise.  Then, when their bad habits begin to catch up with them, they look at drugs for the answer.  Our Health Care Industry thrives off people like this.  It's no wonder that health care is far and away the single largest expenditure in our nations GDP.


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