Lesniak Cunningham Bill Amending The Drug Free School Zone Law

New Jersey made a huge move yesterday with the LESNIAK-CUNNINGHAM bill amending the New Jersey's drug-free school zone law, allowing judges more discretion when sentencing non-violent drug offenders. In a country with too many prisons housing primarily people with non-violent drug charges this is an amazing step towards more treatments and less prisons. New Jersey calculates that $48,000 is spent per person each year on imprisoning people that clearly would be better served in a drug treatment facility. The fact is that drug offenders who serve their time in prison, rather than treatment, have a much greater chance of winding up behind bars again. Unfortunately, New Jersey is not alone, the majority of all jails and prisons in the United States have more inmates convicted with drug related crimes than anything else.

It's pretty clear by now that America's approach on the drug war is failing, so much time and money is being spent imprisoning when we should be treating. The original drug-free school zone law is not doing what it was intended to do, as a result many people are being unfairly punished. The Star Ledger Reports, "The idea, hatched in the Legislature many years ago, was to protect children from drug dealers. But Hoffman's commission found that almost none of those charged under this law were on school grounds luring students. They were in nearby neighborhoods. And 96 percent of them were African-American or Latino". Inner-city kids are much more likely to get caught up with the law because just about everywhere you go in the city it is within a 1,000 feet of a school - in New Jersey and everywhere else in the country. Senator Cunningham believes that, "New Jersey needs to do a better job in getting violent offenders off the streets, whether it's drug offenses or criminal street gangs", according to the Politicker NJ. "However, we cannot and should not continue to turn a blind eye to the effects of mandatory minimum sentencing on nonviolent offenders, many of whom enter prison and are recruited into gangs or other violent criminal enterprises. Mandatory minimum sentencing has created more violence on our streets and a hamstrung judiciary, unable to direct nonviolent offenders to drug treatment programs".

We can only hope that other States will follow New Jerseys lead, just recently New York repealed the Rockefeller drug laws regarding cocaine which is another major step forward in the United States quest towards reducing prison populations as well as costs. I will be following these stories to see if these reforms are as successful as I hope they are. We encourage you to send us your thoughts on the subject.

Prison System Falls Short In Treating Drug Addiction

The United States is literally sick with the disease of addiction. Every day countless numbers of people are sentenced to jail when they belong in drug treatment facilities. The U.S. prison system does not appropriately address the needs of people withdrawing from drugs and people are put through what could only be described as a form of torture. It is estimated that a quarter of a million people that are addicted to heroin are imprisoned each year in the United States. That number is only a fraction of all the people incarcerated that are addicted to various narcotics. Sadly, very few state run prisons offer, let alone provide, any form of detoxification or any type of treatment. A recent Science Daily article addressed this problem and had many interesting facts worth noting. Simply, the U.S. prison system falls short in treating drug addiction.

The Miriam Hospital at Brown University and their affiliated Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights did a study and their findings are almost hard to believe. "Just half of all federal and state prison systems offer ORT (opiate replacement therapy) with the medications methadone and buprenorphine, and only in very limited circumstances. Similarly, only twenty-three states provide referrals for some inmates to treatment upon release from prison. These policies are counter to guidelines issued by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which say prisoners should be offered ORT for treatment of opiate dependence". There is no doubt that providing inmates with the option of ORT and referring prisoners to drug treatment centers, upon release, would dramatically decrease recidivism and ultimately would give people a chance at starting a new life. In turn this would make the streets safer for everyone and this would reduce the taxpayers' burden by keeping addicts from returning to jail over and over.

"Opiate addiction, like all forms of addiction, causes long-term changes to the structure and functioning of the brain, which is why it is classified as a disease. Addiction requires treatment just as other chronic diseases, like diabetes and cancer, do. Unfortunately, there is a large gap between the number of prisoners who require addiction treatment and those who actually receive it," added senior author Josiah Rich, MD, MPH, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at The Miriam Hospital and Alpert Medical School. If an inmate were diagnosed with cancer they would receive proper medical treatment for the disease and the same goes with any illness. Why, then, is the disease of addiction overlooked and thrown under the bus time and time again? The science is clear and the facts have been posted on the wall, but, nobody wants to read them - let alone believe them.

"In spite of overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrating that pharmacological treatment for addiction has greater health and social benefits than abstinence-only policies, many prison directors are philosophically opposed to treating substance use. Most prisons also do not provide referrals for substance use treatment for prisoners upon release. These trends contribute to high re-incarceration rates and have detrimental impacts on community health. Our interviews with prison medical directors suggest that changing these policies may require an enormous cultural shift within correctional systems", stated Amy Nunn, ScD, the studies lead author and an assistant professor of medicine (research) at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. It is hard not to see Amy Nunn's point, real change and the destruction of the social stigmas that come along with addiction are ever so important. If prisons continue to view the disease of addiction as a question of willpower of weak moral fiber, then there will always be hundreds of thousands of people returning to prison as repeat offenders. Over 10 million people go to jail in America every year, most of which have or have had a substance abuse problem. The tools are available for curbing those numbers; however, we are failing to utilize them.

California Industrial Prison Complex Needs Reform

California's need for prison reform is absolutely staggering and a need for a change in the way we view certain crimes is completely necessary. The country is in the grips of a fiscal crisis, the question of how states can cut costs is ever looming; it is no secret that billions of dollars are spent every year imprisoning non-violent offenders, most of which are drug related, in California. There is no question that California's Industrial Prison Complex needs reform and policy changes are vital to helping us relieve some of the states fiscal stress. Today, the total is 168,000 inmates in California which is an increase of 740 percent since the 70's and it costs annually 10 billion dollars to operate; California has a $26 billion budget shortfall, so prisons account for almost half of that number.

A three-judge federal court panel Aug. 4 ordered California to reduce its prisoner roll by 43,000 inmates over the next two years. This is a huge step but there are a lot of people who are against the idea of setting convicted offenders free because we are in a budget crisis. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has cut prison spending by 1.2 billion which will only work if they reduce the amount of inmates. According the Coastal Post, "The state, the judges wrote shortly before a major riot at the state prison at Chino, has created a "criminogenic" system that actually pushes prisoners and parolees to more crimes through "appalling," "horrific" prison conditions: "Thousands of prisoners are assigned to 'bad beds,' such as triple-bunked beds placed in gymnasiums or day rooms, and some institutions have populations approaching 300 percent of their intended capacity. In these overcrowded conditions, inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent, infectious diseases spread more easily, and lockdowns are sometimes the only means by which to maintain control. In short, California's prisons are bursting at the seams and are impossible to manage."" That being said it is hard to believe that cutting prison spending without inmate reduction can do much good at all, it will only fuel the fire.

The reformist Drug Policy Alliance and its allies, a year ago, put a "Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act" on the ballot. Drug treatment officials and a group of former corrections officials, believe that prison is not the answer to the drug problem in California; drug treatment has the greatest chance for curbing recidivism. Billions of tax dollars would be saved and could be put towards more constructive ideas throughout the state. On the other side of the United States, New York has repealed the "Rockefeller drug laws" which were the cause of prison over population as result giving drug offenders long sentences. In the last decade the New York State prisons have reduced their population by 10,000, a pretty amazing feat accomplished by offering treatment as opposed to prison. California obviously has some catching up to do, but, it is clear now what has to be done and New York is direct evidence that it is possible.

"Now California reformers are pushing a "People's Budget Fix" formula they say would save at least $12 billion over the next five years. It includes a claimed $5.5 billion through community-based addiction treatment for minor drug offenses (proposed by the Drug Policy Alliance)", reports the Coastal Post. It seems that we are heading in the right direction now that people realize that drug offenders, as well as the public, are better served by being provided treatment rather than locking people up and just expecting that that will change their behavior.