The Weird and The Wacky Meet

Where YouBetIAm comes to write….

Legalizing Drugs is a Solution to Overcrowding in Prisons

                 Every year, the Connecticut Department of Corrections releases a report that says the same thing:  Prisons are desperately overcrowded.  Why is this?

                 The answer becomes clear when you recognize that eight out of ten people in prison are there for drug-related crimes, and half of them are non-violent offenders, at least according to the 2003 Connecticut Department of Corrections Report on Overcrowding.  In short, if not for drug laws, we would not have overcapacity in our prisons.

                 The purpose of drug laws is to prevent people from using these drugs.  Clearly, it’s not working, because people are still using drugs.  Going to prison is not a deterrent; in fact it’s just causing unnecessary problems.

                   Just like the failed prohibition of alcohol in the 1920’s, which only produced more crime and corruption, drug laws today are creating more crime than they are preventing.   According to the book Social Problems by D. Stanley Eitzen and Maxine Baca Zinn, “punitive drug laws encourage organized crime by making importation, processing, and distribution of illegal drugs extremely lucrative and people selling illicit drugs will often corrupt the police.”

                 Like today’s drugs laws, Prohibition failed because, so long as there’s a demand, people will find a way to fill it.  They’ll make money doing it, and bribe every official along the way.  By making it illegal, we lose our ability to regulate its use to minimize the harm and protect the innocent.

                 Many people would say these laws are a good idea because drugs are bad for you.  Perhaps, but if that’s reason enough to make something illegal then why can I buy a bottle of alcohol, a pack of cigarettes and a McDonald’s Happy Meal?  As much as we don’t want people to harm themselves, we recognize that it’s not necessarily a threat to society, and hence, not a crime.  If anything, drug use is a victimless crime, but the laws against it make victims out of users.

                 Drug laws are causing other problems besides overcrowded prisons.  They affect minorities more than they do white people.  Drugs that are considered black, such as crack, carry much harsher sentencing than drugs that are attributed to white users.  Human Rights Watch reported that blacks are incarcerated nearly twice as much as whites for drug offenses, even though there are five times as many white drug users.  The system is overworked, overcrowded, and desperately unjust.

                 By legalizing drugs or decriminalizing them we also eliminate the need for the crime and violence that is currently being used to import them into this country.  Legal drugs would be cheaper, allowing people to pay for them without sinking to prostitution or mugging.

                 We have a way to lower crime and racism, provide significant human rights boons to a portion of the population, and have a whole new tax base.  It’s criminal of us not to take advantage of such an easy step up.

                 Drug laws at this point are doing more harm than good.  So why are we throwing people in jail? The answer is to be found by looking at who really benefits from this policy.  Running prisons is big business.  It’s also something that the government is increasingly privatizing, putting our civil rights in the hands of for-profit companies.

                 The Corrections Corporation of America is one of the largest privately held companies that run prisons across the country, according to Yahoo News.  They house about 63,000 inmates in 20 states and the District of Columbia.  At their last stockholders meeting they told investors that the demographic producing many prisoners -- males between 18 to 24 years old -- is growing and should create more demand for its services.

                 According to Reese Erlich, author of Prison Labor:  Working For the Man, many prisons, privately run and otherwise, are making money by putting their inmates to work.  It’s not quite slavery, but prisoners who refuse to work lose privileges and don’t get time off for good behavior.  The work they do for much below minimum wage takes jobs away from citizens who aren’t imprisoned, and when laws prevent these cheap, prison-made goods from being sold in America, the prisons just export them to foreign countries. 

                 If we want to make a profit off of drugs, we could be selling them legally. Not only would this make up from the lost tax base from the smaller prisons, but we could insure safer drugs through regulation.   The revenue alone could pay for rehabilitation of addicts, with enough left over to go to public schools.

                 When alcohol was illegal, there was no way to regulate it, so some unscrupulous people sold tainted good, such as wood alcohol, which can blind or kill you.  Right now, this is the situation for drugs, where it’s common for sellers to cut their wares with something cheaper to stretch out their stock.  Drugs don’t have to be as dangerous as there are.

                 After a two year exhaustive study in Canada to determine the benefits of legalization, marijuana was found to have no more negative effect than alcohol or cigarettes, and with stringent government standards it could become much safer.

                 Of course, marijuana is not the only drug, but I think that we need to be consistent in our public policy.   We need to examine closely the effects of all drugs, see how we can make them safer, and see if there is a way to prevent them from overcrowding our prisons. 

                 In short, we need to take advantage of this opportunity, put an end to a racist and unjust system, and legalize or decriminalize drugs.

Copyright 2004

The Marijuana Plant:  Dangerous Fun or the Prison Solution?

By Amanda Evans

Date: 11/29/04