JUSTICE-FREE ZONES?

Home Schools Could Make Drug Prosecution Yet More Draconian.

First, the good news: House and Senate negotiators, now hammering out
education-reform legislation, are clarifying a troubling legal
ambiguity regarding gun laws and home schools, one that could land gun
owners in big trouble if any of their neighbors are home schoolers.
The bad news: a similar ambiguity involves drug laws and home
schooling, and there do not appear to be any efforts to address it.

The gun-ownership problem stems from the federal Gun-Free Schools
Amendment. Passed in 1996, the law requires substantial penalties for
anyone who brings a firearm within 1,000 feet of a public or private
school. The problem, according to the Tom Washburne, director of the
National Center for Home Education , is that 13 states consider home
schools to be "private schools." So if Johnny learns at home, will the
deer rifle in the closet land the family in trouble with the law?

After a few years of scrutiny by groups such as NCHE, the short answer
appears to be "no," but the conference committee is not satisfied. The
proposed changes will spell it out in black and white. "It's just a
clarification," a staffer on the House Committee on Education and the
Workforce told me in a phone interview Wednesday. "No one is being
prosecuted for it right now."

But this legislative clarification, described in a November 6 press
release from the House committee, said nothing about drugs. There is a
labyrinth of state and federal laws restricting drugs in and around
schools, and they pose the same intriguing question arising from the
gun law: Do they apply to home schools?

Why does it matter? There are 850,000 home-schooled children in
America. If the parents or siblings of any of these children sneak a
few bong hits while the kids are away at camp, they may be liable
under the same laws intended for playground drug pushers.

These laws may even apply to neighbors. Let's say you live within
1,000 feet of a home-schooling family. If you get busted with some pot
you could be in for a longer trip up the river than you imagined.
Similarly, what happens to the unfortunate stoner, pulled over for
speeding in an unfamiliar residential neighborhood, when the local
constable finds his stash? If it's anywhere near a home school, things
could get ugly.

While most of the laws apply to drug distribution instead of simple
possession, those definitions vary widely in different jurisdictions.
There is a question of notice. Many school districts post signs
letting potential dealers know about the stricter enforcement. Would
the harsher penalties apply to home-school zones if they didn't post
similar warnings? Ask around. I wish you luck. Nobody in the
enforcement or reform communities has been able to give me a
definitive answer. I asked staffers from the House committee to
address some of these issues a week ago, and they haven't been able to
do come up with any answers.

So far, no prosecutors have attempted to apply drug-free restrictions
to home schools, but anyone relying on continued government restraint
needs a lesson in drug-war politics. Drug-free school zones have
already resulted in embarrassing "zero-tolerance" gaffes in school
districts around the country. Every few weeks a pious principal expels
a pre-teen for slipping an aspirin to an ailing classmate. Eric
Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation -- a
D.C. based institution -- says cops have already shown similarly
questionable judgment: "Law enforcement authorities have made busts
using drug-free school zone authority along interstate highways. They
would stop people and the school is sort of across the highway but is
within the 1,000 feet. It occurs to me that in jurisdictions where you
have that unusual definition of 'private school' that federal agents
might very well use the statute to prosecute and get much longer
sentences, or to coerce plea bargains from people by threatening very
long sentences."

Again, nobody has done that yet, but nobody has been prosecuted for a
gun violation with regard to home schools, either. The powers that be
seem eager to clarify that language. Why the different treatment for
drug zones?

It's certainly not because they keep Junior safe. So says a study
released this July by Boston-based Join Together , a public-health
non-profit that explored how these laws have worked so far in
Massachusetts. Will Brownsberger, Join Together's criminal justice
advisor, concluded that "the school zone statute does not make the
areas around schools particularly safe for children, nor can it
reasonably be expected to do so." It's hard to imagine that similar
restrictions around home schools would be much more effective. It's
even harder to imagine a politician stepping forward to make sure that
doesn't happen.