We all know people who have messed themselves up with drugs. For the past century, the conventional U.S. drug policy has criminalized more drugs and imprisoned more users. This has given us the highest incarceration rate in the world, but it has not solved our drug problems.
Last year, the Legislature passed the Public Safety Realignment law [AB109], which requires certain nonviolent, nonsexual, low-level offenders to serve their sentences in county jails rather than state prisons. This saves taxpayers money, but it has required rethinking priorities for how our local jail space can best be used. Read more »
On June 29th, 17 year old Eric Perez was out riding his bike in West Palm Beach, Florida. Police stopped him for riding his bike without a night-light. During a search, police found marijuana on Eric.
During his time at a detention center – where he was sent due to being on probation for a “years-old” robbery charge – Eric began complaining of a headache and started vomiting. Despite calling for help repeatedly, Eric was left to suffer for 6 hours before finally getting medical attention. By then it was too late…Eric was dead.
Records say lockup supervisors and the facility’s superintendent instructed staff not to call 911.
An incredible tragedy, not only caused by the incompetence of the detention center staff, but also caused by our ridiculous cannabis laws, which put this teenager in his tomb because he had some weed on him, violating his probation.
Without cannabis prohibition, there is a pretty good chance Eric would still be alive. After all, left to his own devices, the instinct of self-preservation would likely have prompted Eric to call 911 or at least get someone to do it for him – a loved one perhaps that cared about him and not some detention guard or supervisor who could care less.
Kudos to Doug Berman over at Sentencing Law and Policy for highlighting Missouri's innovative new approach to sentencing: let judges see the bill for the punishment before they hand it out.
It is the first state to provide judges with defendant-specific data on what particular sentences would cost the taxpayers, and on the likelihood that the person in the dock will reoffend.
Experts say Missouri is the only state to distribute an invoice on a case-by-case basis. ...
"We're seeing a trend where judges are asking for more evidence about best practices," said Greg Hurley, of the National Center for State Courts. "They are looking at an offender's track record and other predictive data that may show which treatments or programs may work best to cut down on recidivism." Read more »
Marc Emery, Canada’s self-proclaimed “Prince of Pot,” is set to be sentenced in a United States Federal Court on September 10. Emery was extradited to the U.S. on May 20, 2010, to serve a five-year prison term for the sale of marijuana seeds over the Internet. Canadian police worked with the U.S.’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to have Emery extradited and charged under America’s vastly more severe drug laws rather than having him serve his prison term in his home country. Emery’s extradition to a foreign country to serve a sentence for activities that took place on domestic soil raises questions not only about prohibition and drug policy issues, but also about Canada’s ability to act as a sovereign nation and protect its own citizens. Read more »
In my 28 months as a guest of the U.S. government, I often wondered how my time in that role would end. I never expected that I would have to serve the whole term, though I was, and am, psychologically prepared to do so, now that I have learned more of the fallibility of American justice, which does convict many people, who, like me, would never dream of committing a crime in a thousand years.
Most evenings as a captive, I telephoned my wife, Barbara, at between 11 and 11.30 p.m., just before the telephones were shut down for the day. I did so on Monday, July 19. Her opening gambit was “What have you heard?” and I dimly replied “Nothing special.” Read more »
In 2000, four Americans were charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran regulation that Honduras no longer enforces. They had fallen foul of the Lacey Act, which bars Americans from breaking foreign rules when hunting or fishing.
The original intent was to prevent Americans from, say, poaching elephants in Kenya. But it has been interpreted to mean that they must abide by every footling wildlife regulation on Earth. The lobster-men had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece. Two are still in jail.
IN 2000 four Americans were charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran regulation that Honduras no longer enforces. They had fallen foul of the Lacey Act, which bars Americans from breaking foreign rules when hunting or fishing. The original intent was to prevent Americans from, say, poaching elephants in Kenya. But it has been interpreted to mean that they must abide by every footling wildlife regulation on Earth. The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece. Two are still in jail.
America is different from the rest of the world in lots of ways, many of them good. One of the bad ones is its willingness to lock up its citizens (see our briefing). One American adult in 100 festers behind bars (with the rate rising to one in nine for young black men). Its imprisoned population, at 2.3m, exceeds that of 15 of its states. No other rich country is nearly as punitive as the Land of the Free. The rate of incarceration is a fifth of America’s level in Britain, a ninth in Germany and a twelfth in Japan. Read more »
In her new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Ohio State University legal scholar Michelle Alexander cogently considers the tidal wave of incarceration that has swept America in the past 30 years. She says mass incarceration has created a "new racial undercaste" which, although race-neutral on its face, has sharply greater impacts on people of color. "A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch," Alexander asserts; if we avert our gaze, "history will judge us harshly." Read more »
Al Wachowich had a few things to get off his chest.
“We get this criticism all the time, that we’re not hard enough,” the recently retired Alberta chief justice told the federal justice committee during a recent hearing in Edmonton.
The committee has been hearing testimony about organized crime. Wachowich was the first member of the judiciary to testify.
He’s heard the accusation innumerable times over his lengthy career: That judges coddle criminals and are too quick to hand out alternative punishments over jail time.
Wachowich told the all-party committee that Canada has one of the highest incarceration rates in the industrialized world, at 130 prisoners per 100,000 population.
If you have a bag of cocaine and you want to add years to the prison sentence you will face if arrested and convicted, one quick way is to go to the stove with a box of baking soda and cook your cocaine into its smokable rock form, crack.
For decades, federal penalties for crack possession have far outweighed penalties for cocaine possession, and that disparity has galled lawyers and activists who say legislators relied on misinformation about crack cocaine's effects when they wrote sentencing laws that have disproportionately punished black drug defendants.
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We all know people who have messed themselves up with drugs. For the past century, the conventional U.S. drug policy has criminalized more drugs and imprisoned more users. This has given us the highest incarceration rate in the world, but it has not solved our drug problems.
By. Joe Klare, 420 Times
By. Families Against Mandatory Minimums
By. Maria Cichosz, The Varsity
By. Conrad Black, National Post
The Economist
By. The Economist
By. ACLU
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