SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A special panel of federal judges tentatively ruled Monday that California must release tens of thousands of inmates to relieve overcrowding.
The judges said no other solution will improve conditions so poor that inmates die regularly of suicides or lack of proper care.
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"There are simply too many prisoners for the existing capacity," they wrote. "Evidence offered at trial was overwhelmingly to the effect that overcrowding is the primary cause of the unconstitutional conditions that have been found to exist in the California prisons." [AP]
This spring, Webb (D-Va.) plans to introduce legislation on a long-standing passion of his: reforming the U.S. prison system. Jails teem with young black men who later struggle to rejoin society, he says. Drug addicts and the mentally ill take up cells that would be better used for violent criminals. And politicians have failed to address this costly problem for fear of being labeled "soft on crime."
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Webb aims much of his criticism at enforcement efforts that he says too often target low-level drug offenders and parole violators, rather than those who perpetrate violence, such as gang members. He also blames policies that strip felons of citizenship rights and can hinder their chances of finding a job after release. He says he believes society can be made safer while making the system more humane and cost-effective.
"It is a gamble for Webb, a fiery and cerebral Democrat from a staunchly law-and-order state."
"â¦as the country struggles with two wars overseas and an ailing economy, overflowing prisons are the last thing on many lawmakers' minds."
"â¦Webb has never been one to rely on polls or political indicators to guide his way."
"Some say Webb's go-it-alone approach could come back to haunt him."
The flood of new felony charges didnât target murderers, rapists or armed robbers â they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.
The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, [Orleans Public Defenders Office Chief of Trials Steve] Singer said.
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A first-time marijuana possession charge in Louisiana is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison but typically results in a small fine. A second offense is a felony that can carry up to five years in jail and a third offense up to 20 years.
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Some say Landrum-Johnsonâs decision to buck history and charge marijuana users with felonies is a political decision meant to assist in her run for Orleans Criminal District Court Section E judgeship. By prosecuting thousands of marijuana possession cases as felonies, Landrum-Johnson can then go to the voters of New Orleans and claim she is âtough on crime,â [Tulane University criminologist Peter] Scharf said. She can point to the massive increase in felony prosecutions under her tenure without explaining that those prosecutions were for people holding joints and not guns, he said. [New Orleans CityBusiness]
Since a huge increase in incarceration was the major policy change in
American criminal justice in the last three decades of the twentieth
century, one would expect many observers to give this boom in
imprisonment the lion's share of the credit for declining crime in the
United States. One problem with such an assumption is that massive
doses of increased incarceration had been administered throughout the
1970s and 1980s with no consistent and visible impact on crime.
The Vera Institute reports that only 25% of the crime drop of the mid-90's was attributable to incarceration. Moreover, since the prison population grew by a staggering 638% between 1970 and 2005, any benefits actually derived through incarceration are achieved at a massive cost, both fiscally and in terms of huge numbers of individual people whose imprisonment didnât actually reduce crime. I mean, crime didn't drop 638%, obviously.
The idea of using incarceration to incapacitate the most serious offenders is ancient and perfectly logical in and of itself. A small minority of offenders commit a large percentage of crimes, thus if we can remove the worst recidivists from society, we'll achieve substantial gains in crime control. The problem is that each successive year of heavy incarceration will impact fewer of these serious offenders, precisely because so many of them are already behind bars. These diminishing returns ensure that lock 'em up policies will become progressively less effective over time, thus incapacitation could not achieve a sustained or proportionate crime reduction even if it were the sole factor, which it is not.
Finally, much of this has limited, if any, applicability to the illicit drug market, which has thoroughly withstood the incarceration boom. Drug sales, unlike rapes and murders, never decrease when the people responsible are removed. Thus, the Drug Czar's enthusiasm for Will's conclusions may have more to do with his appreciation for any spirited defense of the prison population than an actual belief that we've made progress towards reducing the drug trade specifically. Disruptions in the drug market actually increase violence, as we're seeing in Mexico, therefore any sustained reductions in violent crime we've achieved through incarceration could be expanded dramatically by ending the drug war and regulating illicit drug sales. There is absolutely no public safety interest in incapacitating non-violent drug offenders, who will only be replaced, while the State continues to foot the bill for their imprisonment.
Fortunately, for anyone frustrated by the mindlessness of those who still defend our embarrassingly massive prison population, understand this: we literally cannot afford to keep doing this. Not because it has ravished urban communities, and thoroughly corrupted the administration of justice in America, nor because it has fostered the growth of a paramilitary police state that routinely steamrolls the due process of our laws. And not even because the people themselves have grown suspicious of our towering prison industrial complex and the tiresome rhetoric employed by its champions. We cannot afford to keep doing this because we just donât have enough money to indefinitely continue supporting these horrible things.
Eventually, even our most vengeful and ferocious legislators and bureaucrats will have to make better decisions about who to put in our prisons. And when that day arrives, decades of so-called "tough-on-crime" talk will immediately be brushed to the fringes where it has belonged for generations.
Update: Unsurprisingly, Pete Guither is all over this at DrugWarRant.
DRUG dealers are getting themselves sent to prison because they can make huge profits in a few weeks behind bars.
They are raking in tens of thousands of pounds from operations while inside jails.
With a captive market, they can charge fellow inmates more for drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine than they can sell them for on the outside. [Daily Express]
"I'm not interested in legalizing drugs,'' Obama said, adding that he prefers an approach that puts more emphasis on a public health approach to drugs and less emphasis on incarceration.What a shame that Obama's most forward-thinking comments on criminal justice reform must be prefaced with a rejection of the one idea that has a chance of working. The inherent flaw in Obama's narrow, palatable rhetoric is revealed unintentionally by The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last:
He said there should be more programs to keep young people from using drugs. And he said first-time offenders should be given help to overcome their drug use instead of being locked up at massive taxpayer expense from which they emerge as unemployable ex-convicts.
"All we do is give them a master's degree in criminology,'' Obama said. [AP]
The only problem with this is that there are very, very few people incarcerated for first-time drug use.Last goes on to laboriously downplay the persecution of first-time offenders in our criminal justice system. It's an outrageous attempt to argue that everyone in prison deserves to be there. But it does have the effect of reminding us how limited Obama's proposed reforms truly are.
Democratic presidential contenders are in universal agreement that it's time to abolish the racist and irrational sentencing disparity that punishes offenders 100 times worse for crack than for powder cocaine. But after the change is made, Hillary Clinton says that people who've already been imprisoned by this racist law should remain in jail. Why? A campaign advisor says it's because she's scared of what Giuliani will say.
Clinton, who said she supports a federal recommendation for shorter sentences for some people caught with crack cocaine, opposed making those shorter sentences retroactive â which could eventually result in the early release of 20,000 people convicted on drug charges.
"In principle I have problems with retroactivity," she said. "Itâs something a lot of communities will be concerned about as well." [The Politico]
Clinton pollster Mark Penn explains why her position has everything to do with her fear of Rudy Giuliani:
"Rudy Giuliani is already going after the issue," Penn said. "He's already starting to attack Democrats, claiming it will release 20,000 convicted drug dealers."
Speaking in Florida earlier this month, Giuliani said he "would not think we would want a major movement in letting crack cocaine dealers out of jail. It doesn't sound like a good thing to do."
Ah, but it is. These are people who shouldn't be in jail. And Clinton knows it. Punishing people 100 times worse because their cocaine isn't in powder form is so transparently insane that we really can dispense with the hollow rhetoric about "letting crack cocaine dealers out of jail." The law is so twisted you donât even have to be a dealer to end up in jail for years.
If Clinton is really this scared of Giuliani, where does it end? The campaign is far from over. Will she continue to shift around uncomfortably every time Giuliani challenges her policy positions? Newsflash: he's gonna talk trash about everything you do, Senator. Get used to it.
We must now ask ourselves to what extent Hillary's other drug policy positions have been shaped by Rudiphobia. When she raised her hand in opposition to marijuana decrim, was that for real? Was there a little Giuliani in a devil suit whispering in her ear, threatening to tell the swing voters what a hippie she is? Will she backtrack on medical marijuana and needle exchange if Giuliani says he disapproves?
We can spend eternity smashing minority communities with our drug war hammers at the behest of authoritarian demagogues like Rudy Giuliani. And if no one speaks up, that's exactly what will happen. So if Giuliani wants to publicly embrace racist drug war politics, let him.
The antidote to the "soft on drugs" label is to stop looking over your shoulder and start speaking with conviction.
As the Malibu wildfire nears full containment, it is very worth noting that about 1,100 male and female nonviolent drug offenders normally warehoused in California prisons were called upon to risk life and limb fighting last monthâs massively devastating blazes. In fact, nearly one in eight of all firefighters who participated were drug offenders.
After a few phone calls to the state corrections department I learned that about 3,000 inmates helped to fight the wildfires, along with 6,000 non-incarcerated firefighters. Almost 4 out of every 10 inmates involved (about 37%) were nonviolent drug offenders.
Breck Wright, a non-incarcerated firefighter who has worked side by side these inmates on numerous occasions, told The Associated Press, "I think it would be very hard without them. It would really impact usâ¦They are very effective, hardworking and are well-trained. They know what they are doing."
Boy, does this one merit examination â I mean, 1 out of every 3 firefighters relied upon were prisoners?! California is a "tough on crime," three-strikes-you're-out state, which from 1980 to 1999 experienced a 25-fold increase in the number of drug offenders sentenced to state prison. Sentencing in drug cases can be severe. For their effort, the prisoners receive $1 per hour and two days off their sentences for every day spent on the fire lines. An added benefit, of course, is the chance to break the monotony of prison life.
California has at its disposal 4,502 prison inmates fully trained to fight fires, 1,655 of whom are drug offenders. Only inmates considered "minimal custody" are permitted to participate -- violent criminals, kidnappers, sex offenders, and arsonists are all banned. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Conservation Camp Program (CCP) began in 1946 -- before the "war on drugs" kicked off in earnest and became the driving force behind Californiaâs explosive prison growth. Saving state taxpayers more than an average of $80 million annually, the program provides three million person hours in firefighting and other emergencies, and seven million person hours in community service project work.
If the news accounts are accurate, and I don't have a basis for disputing them, the prison firefighters sought to participate in this program and feel that they are getting something out of it, both during their prison terms and after they're released. Nevertheless, the question should be asked whether it is moral to send prisoners, people who by definition are being confined against their will, into a dangerous operation in which some of them could lose their lives. Yes, they went out willingly -- they served with pride -- but why do we have them in prison in the first place? Drug use and drug sales are consensual acts, and the people engaging in them should mostly be left alone. Some drug offenders no doubt got to where they were through living screwed up lives. But even they just need help, or positive opportunities available without going to prison, not incarceration. And why aren't there more opportunities for prisoners generally, and safe ones?
If this group of people is worthy to send to risk their lives to save our lives, homes and businesses, aren't they worthy of freedom too? At a minimum they deserve better than the paltry amount of time off and chincy number of dollars that they're getting. Let's get serious -- how about pardons? After all, the non-incarcerated firefighters have stated how much they needed the prisoners' help. How many homes would have burnt down, communities been destroyed, lives lost, without them? The business owners in Socal who could have lost it all should offer as many jobs to ex-offenders as they can too.
It's sort of hard to decide whether this program is ethical or not, given how unethical is the system we have as a whole. Maybe the prisoner firefighters have served California in another way too -- by highlighting through their courage the moral bankruptcy of prohibition and the war on drugs.