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The Politics of Incarceration Will Have to Change When the Money Runs Out

Reducing incarceration rates is a hottopic this month as state governments desperately seek to decrease spending. It's an important and encouraging trend, but one that gets predictably sidelined when certain interests exert malicious influence over the process. This example from Indiana pretty much sums it up:

 

A criminal justice reform bill that Gov. Mitch Daniels hoped would save more than $1 billion by reducing the number of people held in prison is headed to the Senate floor.

But the bill, approved 8-2 by a Senate committee Monday, has changed so much because of pressure from prosecutors that it's no longer clear whether it will save any money in the long term. [Indianapolis Star]

It should come as a surprise to no one that prosecutors -- who've worked tirelessly to create this problem -- would vigorously oppose any effort to fix it. Their livelihood revolves around the concept that it's good to have lots of people locked up, and that we're lucky to have these bankruptcy-inducing incarceration costs because if we didn't, it would mean all those bad people were still on the streets forcing us to buy drugs from them.

Still, it's generally getting easier for our political culture to agree in principle with the notion that we're keeping far too many people behind bars at far too great a cost. That much is obvious, but the path that brought us here has also resulted in a massive criminal justice infrastructure that's become self-aware and lobbies aggressively on its own behalf. Accordingly, we've now entered a bizarre debate in which almost everyone feigns agreement about what must be done, but they just aren't actually doing it.

Obama's federal drug control budget maintains a Bush-era disparity devoting nearly twice as many resources to punishment as it does for treatment and prevention, despite his saying less than three weeks ago that, “We have to think more about drugs as a public health problem," which requires "shifting resources." [LEAP]

It's a stark hypocrisy, made possible in part by the fact that Obama's rhetoric of reform inevitably rings louder in the press than the reality of boring budgetary figures. For all the progress that's been made towards popularizing the idea that our jails aren't the best place for many who currently reside there, it's impossible to carve out cost-savings without shrinking the output of the factory that our criminal justice system has become. This requires admitting that certain practices are harmful, or at least unnecessary, and ultimately eliminating jobs right and left within a powerful industry that will threaten the public with rape and murder if they don’t get their way.

For better or worse, real progress towards resolving this enormous mess will take place not because politicians and prison profiteers voluntarily admit the error of their ways. It will happen when there literally exists no other option. When the inevitability of ever-increasing, plainly unsustainable incarceration costs becomes simply unbearable, the alternative approaches to which we've paid considerable lip service over the years will finally be given a chance to deliver on their promise. That's what has to happen, and when it does, even the most self-interested scumbags in this debate will eventually be found claiming disingenuously that they supported reform all along.

Article From StoptheDrugWar.org – Creative Commons Licensing

Czechs Ban New Synthetic Drugs, Salvia, Ketamine

The Czech Parliament has moved to ban some 33 synthetic substances now being sold in the country, including synthetic cannabinoids and mephedrone, which is often marketed as bath salts and has stimulant effects similar to cocaine or amphetamines. Also included in the prohibitionist legislation is salvinorin A, the active ingredient in salvia divinorum, and the weird hallucinogen ketamine.

packaged synthetics (image via wikimedia.org)

The European Union banned mephedrone last November, whilethe US DEA banned synthetic cannabinoids effective March 1. The DEA considers mephedrone a drug of interest, but has yet to ban it. About 20 US states have banned synthetic cannabinoids, with action pending in others this year, while similar moves against mephedrone in the states are just getting underway.

The Czech Senate voted 67-0 Wednesday to approve the legislation, which amends the Czech drug law. The House passed the bill last month. According to the Prague Daily Monitor, President Vaclav Klaus is expected to sign the bill into the law before the end of this month.

Some senators worried that rushing the legislation into effect would not allow merchants to get rid of their supplies in time, but that concern fell on deaf ears. Deputy Pavel Bem of the governing Civic Democrats, a sponsor of the legislation, argued that the ban should go into effect as quickly as possible.

The Czech government decriminalized drug possession in personal use amounts in January 2010. It is unclear how these newly criminalized substances fit into the decriminalization scheme or whether personal use amounts for them have been set.

Prague

Czech Republic

Article From StoptheDrugWar.org – Creative Commons Licensing

• 2 co

If "No one goes to jail for marijuana," why keep it illegal?

There are so many stupid arguments against reforming marijuana laws that one could be driven to madness attempting to enumerate them, but there's certainly a place on the list for the claim that decriminalization is pointless because nobody gets punished for pot anyway:

Deputy House Republican Leader Themis Klarides of Derby doesn’t like the idea either. She argues that very few people are actually sent to prison in Connecticut for having less than an ounce of pot. “There are 10 different programs they can enter right now to help them stay out of jail,” she says. [Hartford Advocate]

Well, that's a start, but if you've got 10 different programs to keep marijuana users out of jail, maybe it's time to consider not arresting them in the first place. Everyone, apparently including you, seems to agree that locking these people up is just insane, so what purpose is served by a maintaining a penalty that no one wants to see enforced?

The whole concept of opposing simple decriminalization of marijuana is so devoid of rationality that virtually anyone who seeks to defend that position will be found arguing the following:

1. We must continue punishing people for marijuana, otherwise the kids will think it's ok and life as we know it will descend into a smoldering abyss.

2. We haven't actually been punishing people that much for marijuana.

Variations on these two equally preposterous and irreconcilable propositions largely encapsulate the case against decriminalizing marijuana, and you can't help but marvel at the straight-faced spokespeople who remain committed to rejecting incoherently even the most basic possible reform to our marijuana laws.

Article From StoptheDrugWar.org – Creative Commons Licensing

DEA Finally Admits Marijuana is Medicine

If you thought they were going to issue a formal apology after decades of flagrant dishonesty, you would be mistaken. But the DEA is at long last conceding marijuana's incredible medical value…by giving pharmaceutical companies exclusive permission to make pills out of it.

"[M]arijuana has no scientifically proven medical value." So stated the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on page six of a July 2010 agency white paper, titled "DEA Position on Marijuana."

Yet only four months after the agency committed its "no medical pot" stance to print, it announced its intent to allow for the regulation and marketing of pharmaceutical products containing plant-derived THC -- the primary psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. (Alternet)

DEA can try to frame this any way they like, but the bottom line remains that authorizing cultivation for pharmaceutical companies is the end of the debate. Over. Done. Whatever nuanced distinctions the enemies of medical marijuana seek to advance from this point forward will be devastated by the simple fact that new medicines are being made out of marijuana with the blessing of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Conspiracy theories will abound, of course, regarding the potential for a widespread campaign to shut down state-level medical marijuana programs and instead shove expensive pills down the throats of patients, while arresting providers and cultivators who refuse to comply. That isn't going to happen. As much as the DEA and their corporate co-conspirators might fantasize about it, a full-scale assault on the medical cannabis industry is simply impossible from both a practical and political standpoint. These laws were put in place by the people and they won't be done away with over our objections.

On the contrary, the emergence of cannabis-based pharmaceuticals has real potential to vest corporate interests with a stake in the drug's overall reputation. Rather than distancing themselves from the origins of their products, manufacturers of THC-based medications will recognize that associating their product with marijuana is in fact a shrewd marketing ploy. Marinol has already done exactly that. People love pot and that's going to be the key to selling these pills. As a result, we could soon be witnessing a seemingly impossible scenario in which pharmaceutical companies actually share our frustration when some drug war idiot comes along claiming THC causes schizophrenia.

Obviously, it's unlikely that our goals will ever align perfectly with those of the pharmaceutical industry, but they're clearly better at working with the DEA than we'll ever be. Rather than viewing the situation as a threat to our continued progress, I think we need to recognize that various forms of industrialization will be the inevitable result of our hard work to de-stigmatize the drug. As that process unfolds, we'll encounter numerous new and interesting opportunities to reframe the conversation about the dangers of marijuana. Even if this latest move by DEA is nothing more than a cynical attempt to thwart our progress somehow, I imagine it will backfire just as surely as every other tactic they've deployed in the drug war debate thus far.

Article From StoptheDrugWar.org – Creative Commons Licensing

Why Refusing a Police Search Helps Protect You Even if They Search You Anyway

San Francisco Examiner reports on the latest in a series of controversies surrounding constitutional violations by SFPD officers.

Private attorney Robert Amparan said at a news conference Wednesday at Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s office that a judge had just thrown out his client’s felony marijuana possession for sale case because video evidence contradicted the officers’ testimony in court and statements on the police report.

Amparan said 23-year-old McLaren Wenzell did not consent to letting the officers inside his apartment at 33rd Avenue and Geary Boulevard on March 1. He said the officers did not immediately identify themselves as police and did not have a constitutional basis to search the apartment.

In the course of my work to educate the public about how to properly exercise constitutional rights during police encounters, a reaction I hear frequently is, "What's the point? They're just going to search me anyway." Well, as you can see in the story above, police can get busted for bad behavior, and when they do, the evidence is often declared inadmissible. Think about this: if the suspect had instead given consent for the search, there wouldn't have been any question about the legality of the police entry, and he would have been convicted.  The only reason things worked out for him is because he refused the search and relied on his constitutional rights for protection.

But the critical point here goes beyond what happened to this particular suspect in this particular case. Keep in mind that the legal significance of refusing a police search applies whether or not you've broken the law, and whether or not police break the law. If officers plant evidence, damage your property, or otherwise disrespect your home, it's almost impossible to challenge their actions if you gave them permission to come inside. That's how the law works, and the fact that police sometimes violate it gives you more reason to know and assert your rights, not less.

Article From StoptheDrugWar.org – Creative Commons Licensing

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