California must lead the way in prison reform and rational drug policies

No one in America exemplifies the corrupt nature of mass incarceration better than Jerry Brown, Democratic Governor of California. Like the rest of our prisons in America, California's prisons are instruments for the oppression of black, brown, and youthful Americans.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that overcrowding in prisons is a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. A three-judge panel has informed the state of California that it needs to reduce prisoner population to 137.5% of the prison system's designed capacity.

California's real problem is not a shortage of prisons or an oversupply of prisoners. California needs to reform its laws to make fewer criminals out of non-violent citizens. The state is not alone in this problem. Most of the states have the same one. But California has been ordered by a court to solve its problem, at least partially, yet refuses to do so.

Actually, only Governor Brown refuses to take action. The state legislature passed a law that would have made non-violent drug offenders eligible for early parole, but Brown refused to sign it. Instead, he proposed to spend more money on prisons to lock up thousands of people who should never have been imprisoned in the first place.

California's drug laws are irrational. The state locks up people for possession of small amounts of drugs, but it looks the other way as marijuana growers in the state grew a crop worth at least a billion dollars in 2014. Errand boys go to jail. Kingpins don't.

Brown is unduly influenced by the California Correction Peace Officer’s Association, the prison guards' union. It's understandable, since they paid $2 million for his reelection. Like the honest politician he is, he repays political favors.  The union has only one agenda, to put more prisoners in jail for longer so there will be more jobs for guards and more dues for the union.

In pursuit of this agenda, the union has opposed any sentencing reform. Even Democratic politicians like Brown favor long sentences, and California has one of the strictest sentencing structures in the world. Its "three strikes" law results in life sentences for misdemeanors as trivial as stealing a pizza. Its determinate sentencing laws can result in years spent in prison for relatively innocuous crimes.

When pressed about his opposition to legalization of marijuana, Brown retreats into vague generalizations about how America will not be able to compete in the world if it legalizes this drug:

I do think America’s under a certain amount of competitive pressure. We like to think of ourselves as the leading power, and we’re an aging 4 percent of the world’s 7.2 billion people. So I think we have to stay alert and heads up. I don’t know if everybody’s going to pot that that’s going to be a positive path forward.

This kind of specious logic avoids the real problem of mass incarceration. All the damage that Brown mentions is vague, hypothetical, and unlikely to happen in the real world. Mass incarceration, where America imprisons more of its people, relatively speaking, is a real problem and it has been happening for years. Brown has been ordered by federal judges to reduce the number of prisoners in his state. His response is to say that there may be some kind of problem some time in the future. This response is nonsense.

Brown should lead the people of California, who have shown themselves willing to stand in the vanguard of rational drug and sentencing policies. He should cease to be a dead weight in the current of change.

Washington, D.C. pushes bogus marijuana decriminalization bill

Anyone who's seen a Fox “News” program knows how they work. One talking head reads a news story and the others comment on it, using the most violent distortions of the truth. For instance, one might say, 89 percent of the persons arrested for simple possession of marijuana in the District of Columbia are African-Americans or another minority. Then the Fox commentator says, I wonder why that is? And another one goes into a long-winded reply about how that's the way people are.


Or, on another occasion, someone might read a news item that indicates that marijuana is neither addictive nor harmful. It is certainly not a gateway drug to anything except entanglement in the prison system. Then the other Fox commentator says, surely we can't let this dangerous drug be distributed to our children. Another Fox commentator says, certainly we can't permit this dangerous drug to be legalized.


This sort of comedy show is very popular on Fox. Firmly held opinions of the status-quo are endlessly repeated, no matter how discredited those ideas have been. But these little falsehoods were repeated in DC City Council Chambers last Thursday, October 24, 2013, where the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety was holding hearings on the “decriminalization” of marijuana. The ring master for this farce was Tommy Wells, who I understand is running for mayor. It was Councilman Wells's responsibility to see that witnesses were truthful and all points of view were considered. Unfortunately, Wells did not do that. Instead, he permitted reams of falsehoods to be entered into the record.


Take, for example, the study by Washington Lawyers' committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. This careful study, based entirely on records of the Metropolitan Police Department, showed that 89 percent of arrests made in DC for simple possession were African-Americans. What did Wells say about this disparity in treatment of different races by the police department? He asked the witnesses for the Lawyers' Committee what could be the reason for this startling figure.


Let me make this clear. Wells did not ask the representative of the Mayor, Andrew Fois, how the police intended to fix this problem. No, Wells acted as if it wasn't a problem. Then he sat and listened while Fois explained how decriminalization would work. Mere possession would be legal, but not using the drug on the street. But possession itself would be illegal in City Parks and near schools.


Possession for sale, of course, would still be illegal. Councilman Marion Barry asked how much marijuana a person would have to have before he could be arrested for intent to sell.


Andrew Fois: Oh, any amount.
Barry: Even a single joint?
Fois: Yes.
Barry: So if you had a single joint in your pocket you could be arrested for intent to sell?


At this point one of Fois's deputies jumped in to rescue his boss from the blind alley he had wandered into. “Oh, no,” he said. “There would have to be some other evidence.” What the other evidence might be was not revealed.


When my turn came to testify, I asked the court why they were not considering total legalization. David Rosso has introduced a bill to that effect. It seemed to me inevitable that marijuana would be legalized eventually. Why not now?


Wells got a little hot under the collar. I suppose he was angry at me for disrupting his dog and pony show, where official witnesses lined up to tell Wells what a great guy he was, and what a great job the police are doing, busting 40,000 African-Americans a year, mostly for nothing at all, and how we really can't legalize marijuana right now because, as Wells explained

1. The Congress might do something if we did.
   
2. Legalization of marijuana would do nothing to halt use of more dangerous drugs.
   
3. The time isn't right.
   

To which I would have responded (if Wells had the courtesy to ask what I thought of the matter, instead of pontificating at length about what he thinks,

1. Congress hasn't done anything yet. It is likely, however, that the courts will do something soon about the prevalence of racial profiling, as they did in Floyd v. City of New York.
   
2. Legalization of marijuana only legalizes marijuana, it is not intended to resolve all of society's drug problems. To oppose legalization because it doesn't stop other drugs doesn't make logical sense.
   
3. The time is always right to stop enforcing an unjust law that police use to harass African-Americans.
   

Marijuana: The Harmless Weed

National Lawyer's Guild Testimony before the District of Columbia Board of Directors opposing the marijuana decriminalization bill, Section 102 (D.C. Official Code § 48-901.02)

For nearly a century in the city of Washington, DC, police have been arresting people for holding, smoking, or selling marijuana. The fact that the majority of these people are African-Americans is well-known. People who are in no sense of the word criminals have been sent to prison, sometimes for substantial sentences.

During the past 30 years, the situation has gotten worse. The country has been in the grip of law-and-order mania. Rather than look at the root causes of crime—poverty, discrimination, racism—our lawmakers have decided to put more people in jail, as if that would solve anything. It wouldn't solve anything because people who smoke marijuana are not criminals in the first place. The law makes them criminals, just as racial profiling makes people criminals.

There is a strong connection between racial profiling and marijuana. Studies of New York City's stop-and-frisk laws show that the most frequent result of stop-and-frisk is the discovery of small amounts of marijuana. Police target African-Americans, search them, and find marijuana. The discovery of even a small amount of marijuana may result in an arrest and a court appearance. For a person without the money to pay a lawyer, this could be a serious problem with life-long repercussions.

Now the DC City Council has come to its senses. They now realize there is something fundamentally wrong with punishing recreational use of a harmless—or even frequently beneficial—plant. But this bill is not the answer. It will decriminalize marijuana, but provides no place to legally obtain it. People who traffic in marijuana will still be criminals. Prices for the stuff will still be steep black market prices, reflecting the enormous risks taken by those who smuggle it and sell it.

This bill is a half-way measure, like permitting gay couples to have a civil union license but not a marriage license. That idea was so silly that a wave of laughter has already swept it from the books in more than 20 states. The proposed law on marijuana is equally silly, but it is also extremely harmful, since it retains criminal penalties for sale of marijuana and continues sending non-violent criminals to prison.

This approach has almost the same effect as the “safety valve bill” proposed by the conservative bill mill ALEC and supported by arch conservative David Koch. Rand Paul is sponsoring that bill in the U. S. Senate, S.B. 609. Surely this City Council can come up with something better than that!

This bill is no compromise measure. It leaves intact the system of injustice that has led to mass incarceration and open warfare in our streets during the shameful war on drugs, which is actually a war on our own citizens. Once we recognize that marijuana is not a harmful drug and that people who use it are no more dangerous than the millions who have a few beers while watching Sunday football games, we have no choice but to legalize it, fully and unconditionally.

There is an alternative to this bill, one which is much better for the community. This other bill addresses the real issues of drug use. This alternative bill was introduced by David Grosso. If enacted, Grosso's bill would levy a tax of 10 percent on recreational marijuana and a tax of 6 percent on medical marijuana. It would also authorize the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration to issue licenses to recreational marijuana stores.

This alternative bill would save money the District now wastes imprisoning non-violent drug offenders. It would end the black market in marijuana and let marijuana users purchase the stuff from places that do not also sell Methamphetamine and Cocaine. This is especially important for our youths, who find it easier to buy illicit drugs than alcohol. We should take this opportunity to end the irrational drug policies of the past and start building a new, saner society.

Thank you for listening to us speak on this important issue.