Jackson County (Alabama) law enforcement continues to devote the lion's share of its resources to ineffective prohibition enforcement efforts, if recent felony pleas entered in Circuit are a reflection.
"Although our manufacturing of methamphetamine cases are still way down over what we saw several years ago, the use of methamphetamine and other illegal drugs is still a major challenge for law enforcement," District Attorney Charlie Rhodes told the Daily Sentinel. Rhodes did not indicate whether meth trafficking, or trafficking or manufacture in other drugs, had risen to make up the difference.
A compilation of felony pleas published by the Sentinel in the courts of Circuit Judges Jenifer C. Holt and John H. Graham include 24 cases involving violations of the state's drug prohibition laws, and 10 non-drug cases. Sentences handed down for drug possession ranged from two years to 15 years, and from 10 to 20 years for manufacturing, suggesting the state will be shelling out massive resources on the cases for decades to come.
"Everything you have always heard concerning drugs being the driving force behind many other crimes such as burglary, theft, forgery and even violent crimes is true. The officers in this county are working hard to stay on top of the illegal drug use as shown by these guilty pleas," Rhodes told the Sentinel.
Reformers questioned Rhodes' logic, however. "The way to take on theft and forgery and crimes of violence is to go after those crimes, not to expend 70 percent of your resources on drug crimes that individually usually won't have such a connection," said David Borden, executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org. Borden told the Drug War Chronicle newsletter, "Drugs are connected to those kinds of crimes because prohibition drives up the prices of drugs and puts the trade in the hands of criminals." Borden continued, "Maintenance programs for addicts in places like Switzerland and The Netherlands and Vancouver, Canada, show that drugs don't inherently cause that kind of behavior, it's the situation created by prohibition that does that."
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine last summer found that addicts receiving injectable heroin doses were more likely to remain in treatment and abstain from criminal activity than those in other kinds of treatment.
The next term of felony trials in Jackson County is set for the week of February 8, 2010, according to the Sentinel. If this month's pleas indicate the trend, Jackson County police and prosecutors will continue to impose upwards of $20 million dollars per year in prohibition incarceration costs on future generations.
