DRUG CRIMINALS ARE LIABLE FOR THEIR CRIMES, NOT SOCIETY

Recent opinion columns have postulated that growth in the prison
population is a moral failure of society, and the expansion of drug
rehabilitation programs should be paramount. But a moral failure of
whom? And doesn't New York State have extensive drug rehabilitation
programs?

The state spends an exorbitant amount of money on rehabilitation, and
the moral failure lies not with society but the individual.

That is like calling the shooting of two Buffalo police officers or
the murder of a nun a "mistake," thus taking the responsibility out of
the hands of the offender. It is much simpler to place the onus on the
system or society rather than the moral breakdown of individuals who
generally have lengthy criminal records.

Attempts by defenders to cite criminal justice statistics are
misguided. For example, there are not 2.2 million people incarcerated
in state and federal prison, but in jails and prisons, which still
relates to less than 1 percent of the population.

Furthermore, the majority of felons are not incarcerated solely for
drug crimes, but for drug-related crimes or co-occurring crimes.

Suggestions for the new Congress include:

Change the way the criminal thinks. If you give the great majority of
inmates a college education, he or she still thinks like a criminal.

Prison expansion must continue as our population increases and
increased use of incarceration will be needed.

People are already provided a free education through the 12th grade
and the onus is on the individual to continue in higher education.
With the billions of dollars spent on education, we should be
observing many changes in the individual, right?

It is hardly a moral failure to incarcerate those who deserve to be
incarcerated, especially drug felons. Drug crimes and drug-related
crimes are not victimless crimes but crimes that snowball in loss of
life and property, physical and emotional damage.

New York State lauds a 46 percent drop in crime due to crime control
policies, which is hardly the case. This is due to restructuring of
sentencing, decriminalization, and the restructuring of parole; crime
is still the same with the responsibility removed from the hands of
the criminal.

Think about the number of murders, rapes, robberies, etc., that
occurred in Buffalo and Niagara Falls last year and why this is
happening. Buffalo, in conjunction with decreased police resources, is
a prime example of failed Pataki administration crime control policy
Band-Aids that displaces crime until the drug task force goes away.

The war on drugs is not the failure of society, but the failure of the
individual who refuses to use the skills learned in rehabilitative
programming. Let us now start to think about crime as the moral
failures of the individual.

William Morgan is a doctoral student at Capella University and
professor of criminology at local colleges and universities.