HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/reno.and.wod

Text File | 1996-05-06 | 6KB | 98 lines

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
From: Helen Nusbaum <[e-mail]>
Subject: Janet Reno and The War On Drugs
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1993 08:15:10 GMT


                         Janet Reno and The War On Drugs
                       Copyright 1993 by Steven Meinrath*


          The nation's new Attorney General, Janet Reno, addressed a group
     of business leaders recently and gave them a message they were probably
     not expecting to hear: perhaps it is time to replace mandatory minimum
     prison sentences with alternative sentences for nonviolent offenders;
     perhaps drug policy needs to be redirected to emphasize education and
     treatment.  This, of course, would represent a 180 degree turn around
     from the policies of the past 20 years.

          Draconian mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses have been
     adopted throughout the country and the results are plain to see.  The
     Justice Department recently reported that the nation's prison
     population had reached an all-time high of 883,593, up by 59,460 in the
     last year alone.  And who are all these new souls joining the ranks of
     the masses already behind bars?  "Drug offenders were a major source
     for the increased number of prisoners," according to Lawrence A.
     Greenfield, Acting Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

          The policy of incarcerating huge numbers of people for drug law
     violations versus providing resources for drug abuse prevention and
     treatment has overburdened the entire criminal justice system to the
     point of near collapse and has played a substantial role in creating
     the financial crisis facing our cities.  This situation has developed
     because for years no one in government has dared to challenge this
     policy for fear of sounding soft on crime.  Justice Department figures
     show that in 1977, slightly over one in ten new prison commitments was
     for a drug offense.  In 1990, that figure grew to one-third of all new
     commitments.  No one can credibly argue that the law enforcement
     approach to drug abuse has not been tried, it just hasn't worked.

          Attorney General Reno is not alone in questioning whether the
     nation's drug policy has been a failure.  An increasing number of
     criminal justice professionals, and even some forthright politicians,
     have concluded that the so-called war on drugs is a major part of the
     problem facing our cities.  This month the mayors and police chiefs of
     San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose signed a resolution stating that
     the drug war has been a costly failure and it is time for a change.
     The resolution, authored by Hoover Institution fellows Milton Friedman,
     the Nobel-Prize winning economist, and Joseph McNamara, the former
     police chief of San Jose, urges President Clinton and Congress to
     establish a commission "to recommend revisions of drug laws of the
     United States in order to reduce the harm our current policies are
     causing."

          One need not look far to see the harm these laws are causing.  San
     Francisco mayor Frank Jordan, himself that city's former police chief,
     stated, "We're building new jails, we're closing schools and we're
     reducing library hours all over this country, something is wrong."
     Stressing the need to focus more on rehabilitation and prevention than
     on arrests and punishment, Jordan stated, "Drug use and abuse in
     America is a medical and social problem.  Addiction is not curable by
     criminal solutions alone."

         The resolution also recognized that the drug war has been
     disproportionately waged against minorities, a point which was also
     driven home this month in a federal court in Nashville.  There, U.S.
     District Judge Thomas Wiseman ordered the federal Drug Enforcement
     Agency to return $9,000 which its agents had seized over two years ago
     from Tennessee landscaper Willie Jones.  Although no charges were ever
     filed against Jones, the money was taken from him at Nashville's Metro
     Airport because the DEA said he fit a "drug-courier profile."

          "This may be the first case in which a federal judge has
     specifically determined that drug officers were targeting people on the
     basis of race and found a constitutional violation in that sort of
     tactic," said E.E. Edwards III, Jones' attorney and head of a task
     force of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
     investigating forfeiture abuse.  Scripps-Howard news service reports
     that Judge Wiseman's ruling reverses a trend in the federal courts to
     uphold such seizures.

          All this may signal a policy shift in the making but it is too
     early to declare that the days of chest-beating, war on drugs rhetoric
     and legislation are over.  The Attorney General's comments were clearly
     intended to serve as a trial balloon.  They are sure to meet with
     intense criticism.  Powerful forces are at work to maintain the status
     quo.  The drug war, as disastrous as it has been to the public
     interest, is a multi-billion dollar industry.  Despite these hopeful
     signs, the drug war is still very much with us and continues to drive
     our cities deeper and deeper into financial crisis.


                *Steven Meinrath is an attorney in Sacramento, CA