COMMENT: JAIL BUILDING PROGRAM CAN'T BEAT REHABILITATION

In this country, we lock up one person out of every 145, a much higher
ratio than any other Western nation that is economically and socially
similar. In Italy, the home of notorious crime families, the ratio is
close to one in 1,000.

France's ratio in prison is 0.9 per 1,000, and the Netherlands is 0.65
per 1,000.

The U.S. jail and prison population is approximately 1.8 million, a
doubling of people behind bars in the last 12 years. On any given day,
1.96 million children have a parent or close relative in jail or prison.

The number of female residents has tripled since 1985, and 78 percent
of them are mothers.

For young African-American males, the figures are more startling;
namely, one out of every three is under some form of criminal justice
supervision.

From the above figures, it is clear that we in the United States
believe in locking people up. Why so much more than all Western countries?

One reason would be our drug laws, and yet, we have a glaring
contradiction here. We no longer legislate against alcohol, the No. 1
drug consumed in the United States. Why is this?

We found, through sad experience, that a prohibition did not work.
Crime flourished; people continued to drink; and there were no tax
revenues on the alcohol sold.

Today, alcoholics are referred to treatment centers, and a multitude
of Alcoholics Anonymous groups meet daily.

Is addiction a crime or a disease? Do we lock up addicts or treat them?

Do we spend billions of dollars finding addicts and locking them up,
patrolling our borders and giving millions of dollars to countries
south of our border in order to stem the flow?

Or, do we spend the same billions of dollars on learning the causes of
addiction and working with our families, very early on, to stop these
causes?

In other words, do we treat the symptoms or the causes of a sickness?

Think this through with me. If we decriminalized most of the drugs,
except for the acutely dangerous, we would free our justice officials
to turn their attention to other crimes, or for our officers to spend
more time in the neighborhoods with our youth.

We would remove drug trafficking from our neighborhoods, making our
communities safer, and would have tax money to help the addicts.

We would have excess room in our jails and prisons, and our courts
could stay up to date with their dockets.

Cynics tell me that we will not decriminalize drugs because our penal
system is an industry in which too many people make their living, and
folks in high places reap too much profit from the drug traffic. (The
son of a friend told me that when he was in the military, there was
drug traffic from the top to the bottom.

This community is about to embark on a massive penal building
campaign, which brings the following questions: How much of the budget
will go to rehabilitation programs? Will there be any money spent to
have programs (e.g., training) in the community corrections system?
(The present system, while a great idea, was flawed from the
beginning). Have our local judges seriously explored creative sentencing?

How can we change the unreasonable sentences handed out by judges,
such as ìseveral life sentencesî to the same person, or sentences that
are more than 50 years? Recently, a woman received 15-year sentence
for watching a sexual attack. It was her first offense.

Does this judge have any idea what this woman will be like after
spending seven years in prison, or what she will do when she returns
to society more crippled than before?;

As I said to the County Commissioners at a public meeting: 'Build a
new jail, and they will come.'