The Campaign Against Drug Addicts

As time passes, the tyranny of numbers will lead one to eventually encounter someone who has had a brush with the law. Riding shotgun with a bail bondsman during the weekends one high school summer, I came across a lot of people in this category. We traveled county to county arranging bail for a range of offenders. We sometimes dropped by their homes to encourage them to appear in court. However, I met more convicted felons during my first visit to southeast Newport News as a grassroots supporter of the Webb campaign than I encountered that one summer. Without exception, those ex-offenders talked about barriers to participation in society. This is clearly an issue that must be discussed. And drugs play a huge role in the new numbers, either from their use or from their sale as the only entrepreneurial option when other employment is not possible.

"But since I've started talking about it," Webb continued, "I've had so many people come up to me and say I was convicted of a felony when I was 22 years old, I'm 40 years old now, I've gotten out, I've gotten an education and I want to work but I've got this thing following me around the rest of my life. When can I say I've paid the price?" Webb emphasizes that it is very important for us, particularly with the magnitude of this problem right now, to create the right attitude as long as the people who are coming out of the system are moving forward in the right direction. "We have got to reinforce that, it is a leadership question, it is a community question."

"If you look at the disproportionate nature, if you look along racial lines...I've used an example when I tried to explain the implications of minor drug use and the way we are not dealing with this honestly. I've said and I'll say again right now, there's a street corner in Washington, D.C. at this moment where a young black man is selling some drugs, to, it can even be to another black man, and you can pick any man in that community, there is a person who is going to buy those drugs, drive back out of that community, into Springfield, let's say, once that person who bought those drugs clears that community, the chances of him being arrested are pretty small. But because drug activity is so concentrated in that community (the seller) is going to get caught and someone is going to follow in right behind him. So you've got two people basically doing the same thing and by the time they are 50 years old, the person who bought that drug and took it out into Northern Virginia is going to be talking about his reckless youth and he might even be a judge. And then the person who sold the drugs got caught and he's probably not even able to vote. That is the reality, that's the challenge that we have and that's why we have got to triage what we put people in jail for and look for better ways."

Webb recently put together with the cooperation of George Mason University a three panel symposium, Drugs in America: Trafficking, Policy, & sentencing, that took a broader look at the real range of issues that go into the parameters of illegal drug use in our society. They tried to discuss solutions that can be put into place in an immediate and long term environment.

The analysis of drug use patterns in this country is very interesting. Webb's study looked at who is being imprisoned on non-violent drug offenses. "Statistics show that drug use really doesn't vary by ethnic group in the United States; very, very little variance whatsoever." African Americans are estimated at 14% of regular drug users; 37% of those who are arrested for drug offenses and 56% of the people who are in state prison on drug charges. All the money and all the turmoil that has gone into the drug war really hasn't affected supply or usage rates. The last study that was done in terms of high school seniors' attitudes about drugs, the 2006 study, showed that 86% of the high school seniors report that it is very easy or fairly easy to obtain marijuana; 47% report the same for cocaine; 39% for crack; 27% for heroin. Yet, on the same day that Webb was delivering this indictment, an opinion piece titled "Our Drug Policy is a Success" appeared in the Wall Street Journal, penned by a Bush administration official.

"Workplace tests for cocaine show the lowest use on record."
- John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy

The opinion piece by Walters is nicely crafted for a specific receptive audience. But it doesn't take much thought to reconcile the drug policy "success" with the statistics cited by Senator Webb. The administration study gathers data from groups inclined to use drugs less than the general population: 10th and 12th grade students and persons in the workplace. That would eliminate high school dropouts (possibly 25% of the 10th and 12th grade age population) and the unemployed. And that would be the unemployed writ large rather than the statistic used to measure economic unemployment: those without jobs who are looking for work. Certainly there were few members of the drug franchise surveyed and that is a neat way to bulk up your argument. But the War on Drugs focuses on enforcement rather than prevention. Outside the United States, that translates into an endless supply-side fight. Domestically, it translates into dampening demand. The Walters piece alludes to the choice between hard-side and soft-side approaches. Because changing attitudes is more a struggle, the path of least resistance is to isolate the demand: conduct a campaign against drug addicts and their retail sources. Out of sight, out of mind...

It is not a crime to be addicted to drugs, Webb points out. It is a crime to live by violence. The number of people in custody on drug charges increased 13 times in the last 25 years. Despite the number of people arrested, the illegal drug industry and the flow of drugs has remained undiminished.

"Let me talk more about the Japanese model. It sort of goes to triaging the people we bring inside this net. We're lumping all these people together. We're putting more and more people in prison for non-violent crimes. One thing that we have seen is that criminal activity hasn't really gone up, it's the enforcement mechanism that has gotten wider for probation violations or parole violations, its systemic types of things. We're lumping all these people together and they are getting involved in the prison environment and the chance of recidivism is really higher. In Japan, and I'm not saying we are Japan and we should follow the Japanese model, but it goes to what you are talking about. In Japan you have two types of prisoners, category A and category B. Category A are first time offenders, category B, career criminals. They separate them out in a different place. Category A they focused on reentry; they basically said you are all going to work and we are going to teach you a skill that's marketable. You got a certificate from that system; you go back into your community with this certificate and a marketable skill. So the idea of creating a skill that someone can bring back into the community I think is a very valid concept."

Toward this end, Senator Webb cosponsored the Second Chance Act which authorizes federal grants to government agencies and community and faith-based organizations to provide employment assistance, substance abuse treatment, housing, family programming, mentoring, victims support, and other services that can help reduce re-offending and violations of probation and parole. The counter to claims that this approach is soft is that people in this country want and need leadership now, people who will say what is wrong and try to bring solutions to the issues. In terms of issues, Webb believes we will be in a place within the next year to bring forth some initiatives. He doesn't claim they will be answers, rather proposals that will start moving us back in the right direction. This is one of those issues, he points out, where it is easy to take one bite or another bite, but where need a philosophical approach.

"If I had to give you that I would start with triage. We need to split the components apart: violent crime, gang crime, we need a balance on that issue as opposed to the drug situation which is out of all logical perspective right now and those who have issues of mental illness. And to push at an early stage right now that the people who come out of prison have the ability to transition into a useful life. Part of that is the stigma and part of that is reality, having skills, having focal points in the community so they are welcomed back."

"(Political fear) invades the political process...whatever you say, it is going to be cut and spliced and say soft on crime."

He has been very impressed with what he sees with respect to drug courts. By separating drug use from other types of crime and dealing with it in a different way he argues that we are going to affect the criminal justice system and we are going to help improve the lives of people who simply get involved in non-violent drug use. There are a number of assessments in this area: the Center for Court Innovation in a broad review has found the average reduction of recidivism associated with drug courts was 13%. People who went through drug courts were 13% less likely to get involved with the criminal justice system after that. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy study put it at an 8% decrease. Senator Webb believes we need to treat drug addiction and separate drug addiction from prison environments.

He also supports community and faith based programs, even though, as he points out, the current administration put a lot of emphasis on faith based initiatives that fit with a lot of its own political ideologies. He believes that church structures are natural respositories that are already in existence for reentry programs without creating new bureaucracies."

"If you have paid the price that your community, through its government, has decided you should pay for the crime that you have done, then you should be made whole," he argues. "I don't think that is a difficult concept. The enormity of the problem in terms of the number of people who have gone through the criminal justice system right now means that we should say that you have paid the price for the infraction you have committed and you're whole."

The alternative, it would seem, would be to continue the growth of an emerging permanent underclass. Historically, the growth of that sort of group does bode well for the long term health of a society. A path out of the isolation of drug addiction and incarceration is required.

This is the fourth in a series of what will be five posts generated by Senator Webb's address before The Hamilton Project audience.

7 December, 2008 The War on the Impoverished

8 December, 2008 Senator Webb at The Hamilton Project

9 December, 2008 Storing the Mentally Ill

Next:

Gangs

Cross posted at Blue Commonwealth

Cross posted at VBDems.org - Blogging our way to Democratic wins in Virginia Beach!

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