ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICIES WREAK HAVOC ON CHILDREN'S EDUCATION

There are children who matter so little that no government agency
even bothers to count or keep statistical track of them. They are the
children of prisoners. Nationally, the justice systems have no
interest in how children or families are affected by an offending
parent's imprisonment. The state ensures that the sins of the father
are visited upon the son.

The number-one predictor of a child going to prison is having had a
parent in prison.

The number-one drag on a child's academic success is family chaos of
any kind. And nothing is as chaotic as having a parent yanked out of
their lives and branded as a convict.

Sen. Leo Blais, D-Coventry, has submitted Bill S0320 to the General
Assembly, to reduce the penalty for possession of less than an ounce
of marijuana to a fine of $100. Excellent. Hopefully this bill will
pass. Hopefully it will start a trend of rethinking all of the
state's morally-righteous but destructive laws that don't take
families into account.

The 1990s surge of harsh zero-tolerance laws stuffed the U.S. prisons
to the point where we lock up a higher percentage of our own people
than any other country in the world. Some unlucky inmates got caught
with an ounce or less of marijuana. In Rhode Island, 89 percent of
the marijuana arrests are for possession. Is passing a joint among
friends that much more pernicious than sharing a bottle of wine?

Well, some would say marijuana is the gateway to more serious drug use.

Sol Roderiquez, director of the Family Life Center in South
Providence, would say, "Incarceration itself leads to worse drugs,
often worse crimes. And with a prison record, it's so hard for an
ex-offender to get a job, crime is one of the few options left." And
so the cycle continues.

The Family Life Center helps ex-cons piece their shattered lives back
together so they can live in the mainstream again.

According to the 2007 Pew prison report, Rhode Island spends $44,860
a year per inmate ­ the highest in the country. And that doesn't
include the court costs.

But neighboring Massachusetts passed a law similar to Blais' that
will save their taxpayers almost $30 million a year in arrests,
bookings, and basic court costs alone. Eleven other states have also
passed such laws. Vermont is considering one now.

Blais' bill is not legalization of marijuana, but decriminalization.
The mom, dad, uncle, or sister caught with a joint won't have a
criminal conviction on their record that makes supporting a family
with legitimate work nigh impossible.

According to a survey done by RI Kids Count, as of Sept. 30, 2007,
roughly two-thirds of the 3,081 inmate responders had children ­
4,520 children, to be exact. When the parent goes to jail, many
children go into foster or residential care, or stay with relatives
who resent the unasked-for burden and cost. Families split up.
Children act out. The stress is intense.

Roderiquez says, "When the state imposes such a severe punishment, it
should take the whole family into account. Prison has huge
consequences for the whole family. But we've dehumanized this
population. They don't have feelings or respond emotionally. No one
pays attention to the fact that we're pushing the families into falling apart."

Roderiquez and her colleague Nick Horton, policy researcher at the
center, have seen it all, and rattled off story after story.

There was the family with three daughters. When the husband and
breadwinner went to prison, the mother went on welfare. In time, the
youngest child had to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder,
and the oldest became a classically enraged young adolescent, getting
involved in serious escapist bad habits. All three girls' grades at
school have tanked. Roderiquez and Horton add that children's grades
always suffer. Always. "It's the first thing to go," said Roderiquez.

Then there was the single father responsible for two children. When
he went to prison, one dropped out of school immediately, and the
other ran away.

I'll gladly stipulate that smoking dope could be an indicator of
growing or potentially dangerous social behavior. But wouldn't it be
more effective in the long run, more healing for everyone, to send a
family-services worker to the home to help those families who are in
fact dangerously drug-involved? The City of Providence has a
nationally recognized "go-team" of family-service workers whom the
police call to crime scenes when children are present or a family is
traumatized. Use them for marijuana busts. If you must punish the
offender, revoke a bit of the family's privacy by investigating
whether a family has unhealthy stresses driving the drug use. If
we're serious about "corrections," the only real way to correct
misbehavior is to get to the root cause, which prison does not.

When the best solution to a social problem is treatment, provide
treatment. It's cheaper than courts and prisons, healthier, and more
long-lasting. For my money, the state should look at all their laws
with an eye to the collateral damage that harsh penalties cause to an
offender's extended community. Is the damage worth it? Sometimes
prison is necessary, but often it's just vindictive.

And for heaven's sake, start collecting data on the inmates'
children. Bring those children to light. They are our responsibility.