Few United States senators have a more unusual CV than Virginia’s Jim Webb. He’s a Democrat who was once a Republican and served as Navy Secretary under Ronald Reagan. He’s a decorated Vietnam veteran and the highly successful author of Fields of Fire, which is said by many to be the best novel ever written about that war. When he made his senate bid in 2006, his Republican opponent ran adverts criticising some explicit sexy passages in other Webb works. Now he is embarked on perhaps his most improbable mission: the senior senator, from one of the toughest law-and-order states, wants to restore humanity, and proportionality, to the punishment of criminals.
All the focus, right now, is on reforming the US healthcare system. Think prisons, and you think Guantanamo Bay, and the bizarre debate over whether the transfer of its inmates to the mainland would see alleged Islamist terrorists burst out of fearsome maximum-security jails such as Florence, Colorado, and run amok across the Rockies.
When it comes to sending people to jail, America is the undisputed world champion. In 1970, a mere 200,000 people were behind bars. Last year, 2.3 million were held in federal, state and county prisons, more than 1 per cent of all adults in the US and five times the international average. Blacks, predictably, bear the brunt of this compulsion to incarcerate, accounting for 40 per cent of the prison population. This punishment industry gives work to more than two million, more even than the 1.7 million employed in higher education.
“Blacks, predictably, bear the brunt of this compulsion to incarcerate, accounting for 40 per cent of the prison population.”
What?!? How and why is it predictable? Is it because there is a 70% out of wedlock birth rate in that community? What is the point of making such a statement?
Be honest with yourself and you will admit that there are still a lot of people walking the street who ought to be in jail.
I suppose you could argue, as the author seems to do, that we should never incarcerate the Bernie Madoffs or Michael Milkens because they are not violent threats. Heck, they wanted to send Scooter Libby to jail before his sentence was commuted. I don’t buy the argument that drug users are not threats — at least not anyone jailed for using hard drugs like meth or heroin.
The essence of the problem in the States — and I’ve spent more than half my adult life in other countries, plural — is the ‘War on Drugs.’ It is phenomenally stupid. I had a Bolivian colleague with perhaps a Grade III education opine most cogently that as long as there is demand, somebody will fill it. Should this be illegal?
More to the point, a research study some 20 years ago at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia demonstrated that roughly ten percent of populations around the world had some sort of addictive behavior. Coke, Horse, ethanol, whatever.
Amazingly, one-third of Americans favor a return to outright Prohibition of alcohol. Frustrated by their inability to achieve that they dig in their heels about drugs.
If all street drugs were legalised tomorrow, would [i]YOU[/i] start using them?
The problem is with the criminality. Addicts are going to find their ‘stuff’ whatever it is. Cut the addictive drunk off from his booze and he buys up old vinyl LPs and melts them down for their alcohol component. Our local wine store has a much better idea … they sell a ‘traveller’ of ‘vodka’ (40% abv) at whatever price — plus tax — comes to exactly five bucks. “Takes care of the rubbies, so they don’t steal our other stuff.”
We should do the same thing with most of the users, possessors, and petty dealers now in our prison system. Legalize the whole thing. Overturn their convictions. Let them out. Backspace. Delete.
Why on Earth does a 19-year-old who steals a boom box to fence for his next fix get 8 to 12 without parole, while folks who steal millions in a “white-collar” crime get 2 to 4 in minimum, with parole after 18 months?
The ‘War on Drugs’ has created every bit as much mess and crime as did Prohibition. Let us hope that the new depression upon which we are embarqued will offer up the same sort of common sense, though it took until late 1931 (late 2010?) for a majority of people to decide that the exercise had been a long lasting piece of political idiocy.
Bart Hall,
Something we can agree on.
End the war on drugs; place drug use in the hands of doctors. Penalize violent criminals.
Save the tax payers money. Tax drugs creating a new source of income. We’ll decrease aid to foreign governments, and we won’t need to spend so much on our DEA. And we’d be safer.
The main people who benefit are drug dealers and bloated state governments – including prison guards.
I couldn’t agree more about legalizing drugs, JW, but I don’t expect it any time soon nor do I expect it to alleviate the law enforcement situation surrounding most drugs. The most used illegal substance is marijuana, a plant easily cultivated almost anywhere in America, even in basements and attics. Legalization combined with taxation will just shift the enforcement from one of discovery and suppression of banned substances to one of a refusal to pay taxes on a permitted substance, a reprise of ‘shiners and “revenooers.” Taxation presumes a centralized manufacturing and/or distribution system, something the war on drugs has prevented. Try to tax pot beyond anything but a nominal levy, and you’ll push it back underground and we’ll have what we have yet again.
Nah, Jeff … the wife and I can each make 200 gallons of beer or wine at home. Better than a gallon a day for the two of us is a metric $#|+load of booze. I don’t know what would be the equivalent for weed, having never had a single toke in my life, but I’m sure lotsa folks in government have a good idea.
JW … I’m primarily a constitutional conservative. Some would call us ‘libertarians’ but that’s not the point. There are libertarians out there who believe the yellow line down the middle of the road is excess government interference into private affairs.
Whilst my views are right-of-center, I’ve never had big arguments with left-of-center constitutionalists. We can haggle over the small stuff, but agree on the really important things. One of my best friends and I have been 180 degrees opposite on key political issues for 25 years — it became an element of our friendship, not a barrier to it.
What’s essential is a logic-driven adherence to our Founding Documents.
[blockquote]Nah, Jeff … the wife and I can each make 200 gallons of beer or wine at home. Better than a gallon a day for the two of us is a metric $#|+load of booze. I don’t know what would be the equivalent for weed, having never had a single toke in my life, but I’m sure lotsa folks in government have a good idea.[/blockquote]
It’s really a matter of quality and capital. It takes a fair amount of capital and skill to make a decent beer, wine or spirit, not to mention a fair amount of space for the process and the finished product. All you need for a sizeable indoor pot farm is a few flower pots and grow lights. Put it outdoors and you don’t even need that. And the quality will be generally acceptable no matter what, with enough finished product for dozens of people fitting in the space of a medium-sized suitcase.
A common feature of both Prohibition and our modern correctional system is that neither is consistent with Biblical teachings. Scripture allows alcohol consumption, but forbids drunkenness, so Prohibition was an “improvement” on the word of God. Likewise, the Quaker idea of the penitentiary was thought to be an improvement on Biblical requirements of restitution.
Typically, the Law of Moses stipulated double restitution for theft, with indentured servitude as a way for destitute thieves to get the wherewithal to pay their victims. Prison should be only for violent criminals and those who refuse to work to raise restitution. All minimum sentencing laws should be repealed, along with most of the War on Drugs. Politicians will not get this message until the churches start talking about it, in my opinion.
Believe it or not…I agree.
They can’t keep drugs out of maximum security prisons. What makes any rational mind think they can keep drugs off the streets?