Jim Webb:
We've -- this is a chance to put a lot of issues on the table. One of the issues which never comes up in campaigns but it's an issue that's tearing this country apart is this whole notion of our criminal justice system, how many people are in our criminal justice system more -- I think we have two million people incarcerated in this country right now and that's an issue that's going to take two or three years to try to get to the bottom of and that's where I want to put my energy.
Here's a bit more background.
2.2 Million Americans in Jail: this is insane.
Staggering:
According to new data from the U.S. Department of Justice, one in 136 Americans is behind bars today, including an astounding 12 percent of all black men between the ages of 25 and 29. The United States represents 4.6 percent of the world's population, but houses nearly 23 percent of humanity's prison population.
The best way to keep people out of jail is to raise kids up with good, healthy families. The painful question here is this: How can healthy families prosper if so many fathers are in prison? A catch-22 that's especially dangerous and damaging to lower income, families, especially African Americans.
More astonishing facts below the fold.
As of 2005, drug offenders accounted for 55 percent of the federal prison population. About 45 percent of them were in prison for possession, not trafficking.The number of people incarcerated in federal prisons for drug crimes rose from 14,976 in 1986 to 68,360 in 1999.
It costs U.S. taxpayers $3 billion per year to keep drug offenders behind bars in federal prisons.
Drug offenders have accounted for nearly half the meteoric growth in prison populations since 1995.
About half the population of U.S. jails and prisons are nonviolent offenders, more than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska.
Forty percent of the more than 1,000 state prisons in the U.S. opened in just the last 25 years.
The state of Texas alone has opened an average of 5.7 new prisons each year for the last 21 years. Despite this, about half of federal and state prisons operate over capacity.
Total U.S. inmates numbered 488,000 in 1985, 1.3 million in 2001, and number 2.2 million today.
According to survey data by human rights groups, one in five U.S. prison inmates has been sexually assaulted.
According to federal sentencing guidelines, a man would need to possess 50 times more powder cocaine (preferred by white users) than crack cocaine (preferred by black users) to earn the same prison sentence.
Blacks represent about 12 percent of the U.S. population, but 48 percent of the prison population. They represent just 13 percent of drug users, but 38 percent of those arrested for drug crimes, and 59 percent of those convicted.
When convicted of the same drug felony, blacks are about 50 percent more likely to be sentenced to prison than whites.A black woman's chances of spending some time in prison over the course of her life (5.6 percent) is about equal that of a white man (5.9 percent). For black men, the odds are nearly one in three (32.2%).
Before Congress passed mandatory minimums for offenses related to crack (but which didn't apply to powder cocaine) in 1986, the average drug-related sentence for blacks was 11 percent higher than for whites. After that law, the disparity jumped to 49 percent.
Finally, here's the kicker:
"Despite all of this, overall drug use in this country hasn't substantially abated."
...the percentage of people reporting illicit drug use in their lifetimes rose from 31.3 percent in 1979 to 35.8 percent in 1998. Between 1999 and 2001, the figure went from 39.7 to 41.1 (data prior to 1998 isn't comparable to data after 1998 due to changes in methodology). The percentage of college students reporting having used marijuana in the last year went from 27.9 percent in 1993 to 33.7 percent in 2003; the number using in the past month went from 14.2 percent to 19.3 percent; and the number reporting daily use went from 1.9 percent to 4.7 percent.
As someone who has been defending criminal cases for over 20 years the clients are very real to me. I meet them and their families and I hear stories that would curl your hair. I've represented people who grew up in circumstances so dire it's a miracle they're not doing more damage to society. Instead, most of them have substance abuse problems and have trouble navigating through an increasingly complex system.
I'm not soft. More than one client has felt the sting of my temper and my opinion. I'm painfully blunt when dealing with screwups. I divide my criminal defendants into the knuckleheads (the ones without no sense or poor character), the befuddled (the head cases and mental health sufferers), and the psychopaths. The psychopaths are by far the smallest number, and I can go for months or even a year or two without meeting one. Most of my clients are people who would be salvageable if the circumstances are right, and it is frustrating to see how limited our options are with them.
The biggest problem is the demonization of substance abusers in our society, codified in our laws. We have a very schizophrenic approach in our society - many people, including cops and prosecutors, have privately told me of their youthful sins - their drunken parties, their marijuana usage, their experimentation with harder drugs - but they are expected to enforce a zero tolerance law in Virginia. In Arlington County it is possible to be caught with a jeweler's sized plastic bag (about the size of a postage stamp) with cocaine residue and be convicted of possession of a Schedule II or Schedule III substance (both felonies) based on chemical testing of what USED to be in the bag. (If it ain't marijuana you're up Felony Creek). There are people locked up in the Arlington jail based on such "residue" cases. A typical disposition is a two year suspended prison sentence with probation for three years. If the addict screws up on probation - positive urines, fails to report to probation, moves without permission, gets charged with a subsequent crime such as possession of marijuana or petty shoplifting - then the two year sentence can and often is imposed. One of our retired circuit court judges has told me that the Arlington court's dispostions are considered "soft" by other courts. Go figure.
Anyone who works in our criminal justice system knows that bipolar and depressed individuals and schizophrenics self-medicate. They drink to excess and use drugs like marijuana to sooth themselves. Moreover, kids from the ghettoes of Southeast DC and lower PG are SO exposed to marijuana they are surprised to hear that possession is illegal. Just surprised. They may start out with probation or a suspended imposition of sentence in a shoplifting or theft case in Arlington, but the number one probation violation is marijuana use. Most of them don't understand the consequences of using pot when they're on probation. And of course the consequence of a probation violation is a felony conviction. Many times these people are not even out of their teens, or they are caring for kids or elder relatives, or they have jobs.
Sorry for the long comment. Josh, keep up the good work and keep posting your graphs. We're losing a whole generation.
catzmaw, at least part of that schizophrenia is based on class. I know plenty of white collar folks who place legalization of marijuana fairly high on their priority list and many who smoke pot recreationally. At the same time they think it's just fine for blue collar workers to be subjected to random drug tests.
Blue collar workers often risk their lives, consistently receive less pay and are subjected to higher standards of behavior. That's just wrong in my book.
As a matter of fact, I am all for random drug testing of white collar workers for the SOLE purpose of exposing this hypocrisy and double standard.
Why should this guy
be held to higher standards than folks who are paid 3-4 times as much to design things like this?
Enough engineering students flub problems on centripetal force without mind altering drugs.
I worked with the Bureau of Prisons for a while (IT Consultant). At the time (1999-2000) there were almost 2 million people in Federal prison and another 3 million in state prisons and county jails.
The above numbers came from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
I heard Jim Webb mention the 2 million figure on ABC's ?? Sunday news show and wondered where he got them.
But every year we see harsher laws with bigger penalties passing through Congress and the state legislatures. We have a bizarre system of laws in which 18 year olds are old enough to go to war, to go to adult jails for their crimes, to be held responsible for their youthful indiscretions for the rest of their lives, but are not considered mature enough to drink a beer. Yet they're all drinking - it's just under wraps - and we've seen an exponential increase in binge drinking from the days when it was legal for them to drink. Everything's about "zero tolerance" and draconian statutes and those caught up in the law's provisions can see the hypocrisy of it all, which is why they have no respect for the law.
There is so much hypocrisy in this system it makes me ill.
Part of the problem is how much middle class society stigmatizes youthful mistakes. And related to this, the notion of grooming their kids to be perfect, get into the right college and be what middle class society considers a success. Because of this kids are overprotected and shielded from the experiences that are a necessary part of maturing. The attitude is youthful indiscretions are what "those other peoples kids" do, you know, the ones who are poor and lower class. Meanwhile the attitude toward "those other" kids is lock them up and ruin their lives. But not "my" kids.
The real problems are:
No parole - people have to serve full sentences
War on Drugs - is really just a "war" on civil rights
Zero tollerance - when a 5yo is charged with a sex crime for hugging his teacher, we've gone waaayyy to far.
(this information comes from Table 4 in this Dep't of Justice publication - http://www.ojp.usdoj...)
There's no good reason for this discrepancy other than racism, hatred, and ignorance. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and that needs to stop.
Raising Kaine could play a big part in ending the incarceration crisis and moving the Commonwealth towards saner criminal justice policies. Right now there are a lot of groups working on these issues (the Catholic Church, Virginia C.U.R.E., the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP), and others), but Raising Kaine reaches a lot of Democratic activists who aren't a member of any of these groups. Right now the Democratic Party is contributing to the crisis, rather than working to end it. That can change, but we need to be a part of that change.
I would love to see marijuana an hashish legalized and placed into VA's abc stores...the profits could be used for substance abuse and mental health treatment....We would all save a bundle on incarceration costs...
Furthermore I would love to see substance abuse decriminalized....at the very least made a misdemeanor.
I'd prefer that folks who commit nonviolent crimes such as property crimes on the first offense have to pay restitution and a fine and serve time at home and work (with a gps/ankle bracelet system)...
We should limit incarceration to violent offenders. We'd have more money for other public needs (healthcare, education, roads, etc) and maybe we would be able to afford rehabiliatation programs for those incarcerated.
It just makes more sense to reform this heinous prison system we currently have.....buz...buzz...
Estimates of registered sex offenders range from 386,000 to over 600,000 depending on the source. The above-cited BOJ study noted that 87% of new offenses are committed by people not on the registries. Therefore, we are looking at hundreds of thousands of people who are susceptible to mandatory minimums for a lifetime. Although some clearly require extended prison time, we are clogging prisons with those who do not require such lengthy sentences.
As states and the federal government seek to tighten restrictions on all levels of sex offenders regardless of type of offense or assessed risk to the community, these prison numbers will grow. Senator Webb needs to take a close look at ridiculous mandatory minimums for all offenses as a major contributing factor to the growing prison population.