The “War on Drugs” has been an economic and social disaster on steroids

Forty years ago Nixon announced the now infamous “war on drugs” when he declared drug addiction “public enemy number one.” What an economic and social disaster! With costs exceeding $1 trillion, huge increase in prison populations due to tens of millions of arrests, millions imprisoned without rehabilitation, an evolution into a “prison nation” with a massive expansion of the prison-industrial complex, there has been no decrease in the use or abuse of illicit drugs. All we’ve done is make more addicts, better trained criminals, and a hugely increased number of family members on public assistance! How dumb is that? A recent study revealed that 83% of prisoners at Cook County jail, the largest jail in the country have positive drug tests upon arrest. States budgets are busted! Rural communities are now prison towns – not industrial, high-tech, or artistic centers running the engine of the economy with new industries.

What did Albert Einstein say? “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  I guess its time to stop doing the same thing!  Maybe we should think about:

1. rehabilitation in prison with intense mental health treatment if they commit violent crimes,
2.  treating drug addiction as a disease instead of a crime,
3. putting addicts who committed non-violent crimes to work in community service projects so they can stay employed, save the tax payers dollars, and support their families while being supervised and treated for addiction at 1/4 the cost, in other words – creative and alternative sentencing
4. increasing carefully supervised parole and probation programs with  highly qualified parole agents, not the underqualified non-college graduate police officers and former correctional officers now used,
5. making specialized drug courts where judges are required to have specialized training before coming on the bench,
6. increasing qualifications needed to become a parole officer (one of the most difficult jobs on the planet if done right) so that there is training in psychology, drug addiction, mental illness, social services, and policing techniques including safe entry into a home with safety for the officers a high priority, as well as better gang intelligence on the streets,
7. saving taxpayer dollars by changing sentencing laws and down-sizing the prison industrial complex so we stop warehousing people while training them to be better criminals and instead treat their mental health and addictions without imprisonment, and
8. decriminalization and experiments in legal regulation of drugs (tax marijuana like we tax alcohol) as has worked well in Portugal and is being tried now in Mexico.

Read about the details of the global community embracing this new  philosophy here: http://www.thenation.com/article/161505/forty-year-quagmire-exit-strategy-war-drugs

Now is the time to write your Senators and Congressmen as well as local legislators, speak up from the pulpit, recruit your local police chief to support these reforms, speak up at public meetings at all levels of government, and organize in your communities.

Not only is this the right time and place for a new civil rights movement that treats addictions as mental health issues, our economy can no longer afford to be a prison nation incarceration 7-40 times more members of our population than any civilized country. We have the same number of  prisoners as China but a fifth the population.

Flood the Department of Justice phone lines with demands to decriminalize marijuana and for alternative sentencing and banning private prisons. Write Attorney General Eric Holder and demand he lead the charge for reform:

United States Attorney General Sessions
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

By Phone

Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line  – 202-353-1555

e-mail me a message that you participated and tell me how you are organizing in your community for change at picepil@aol.com

Juvenile Prison Reform Yields Results for Once

ABCNEWS.com posted a story about Missouri’s experiment in juvenile justice reform. There have been increasing reports that the juvenile justice system in the United States is causing more harm than good, causing the kids to have more mental health issues and teaching them greater violence, rather than solving their problems and teaching a healthier lifestyle. Instead of producing more law abiding citizens, we have been further destroying the kids that are churned through the system. But – What is the solution?

Their reforms are producing dramatic results due to sensible approaches in treating the kids as persons needing guidance and caring adult supervision, rather than as hardened criminals to be only punished and whipped into submission.  They have a 10 % recitivism rate versus the 40 % found at most juvenile prisons.

I propose that a rethinking of adult incarceration programs along these lines, particularly for drug-addicts, the mentally ill, and non-violent felons, would produce similar dramatic improvements in recitivism and decreased costs.

“Recent reports about abuse of juvenile inmates have renewed calls for a national overhaul of a juvenile justice system that includes nearly 100,000 children.

At Waverly Regional Youth Center in Missouri, the boys are taught to settle their disagreements with words, not fists. Any person can call a “Circle”, meaning everyone stops whatever they are doing and they work on the issue.

In Missouri, a different method for juvenile prisons has seen surprisingly successful results, trading in the orange uniforms and cell blocks for therapists and dorm rooms.”

 http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/missouris-juvenile-justice-system/Story?id=8511600&page=1

IL Denies Mental Health Care to Medicaid Patients

Attorney General Lisa Madigan is fraudulently prosecuting legitimate, quality providers of mental health care to Medicaid patients. She is using this to say she is “tough on fraud” and the State is using this to help balance the budget at the heavy cost to society. Without mental health care addiction increases, crime increases, mentally ill commit minor crimes such as stealing food and are victims of crimes, productive lives are lost, the State incurs increased costs of caring for these people and their families, $40,000 or more is spent per year to incarcerate non-violent offenders instead of providing them treatment so they can support their families, take care of their children, and contribute to the tax base.  This is corruption at its height.  Why is Obama administration ignoring this?

http://illinoiscorruption.blogspot.com/2008/10/criminal-scheme-of-il-attorney-general.html

http://illinoiscorruption.blogspot.com/2009/02/judge-jorge-alonso-overturns-federal.html

http://illinoiscorruption.blogspot.com/2009/07/excess-incarceration-rate-leads-to-more.html

High Incarceration Rate Leads to Increased Troubled Children and Welfare

Excess Incarceration Rate Leads to More Troubled Children and More Welfare

The huge incarceration rate in Illinois, where we send non-violent drug abusers and thieves to prison at a rate 40 times greater than any civilized country means that we are breaking our economy. The children of the prisoners are a great social burden when parents don’t earn an income or care for them. Tax dollars are also lost when prisoners do not work.

It is a much better solution to sentence non-violent offenders to curfews when not at work and community service to pay back what they took from society. Restorative justice is more appropriate. In prison less than 15% of addicts get treatment and there are five times more mentally ill in prison, without appropriate treatment than in all the mental health facilities in the country combined.

It is a much better solution to pay for daily drug addiction treatment, home monitoring, and mental health treatment than to pay $30,000 per year to incarcerate a prisoner, not treat them, and then send them back to a life of crime or untreated mental illness.

We are FOOLS in Illinois and the rest of the country! What a waste of dollars and human potential! Talk to your legislators. Elect only those that pledge to change this disaster. Our phony war of being “tough on crime” is a joke and has not worked. These prisoners, are usually released. If we don’t rehabilitate them, we deserve what we get.

For discussion and solutions to the problems see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/us/05prison.html?_r=1

https://drlindashelton.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/help-save-economy-by-saving-billions-with-judicialprison-reform-stop-torture/

https://drlindashelton.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/re-integrating-600000-ex-cons-per-year-and-growing-give-your-suggestions/

https://drlindashelton.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/punishment-and-fairness-comparative-nature-of-punishment/