In December the non-partisan Crime and Justice Institute noted that over the past 10 years, the budgets for the state’s prisons and jails have grown at a faster rate than the budgets for most other state services. Indeed, the budgets for public health, higher education and local aid have all decreased.
Perhaps such skewed priorities might make sense if we were buying ourselves a safer commonwealth: fewer drug offenses, reduced drug use and fewer ex-offenders caught in the revolving door of recidivism. But after nearly 30 years on the books, there is overwhelming evidence that our drug sentencing laws are a failure – an expensive and unconscionable failure.
Between 1998 and 2008, the number of state prisoners serving mandatory drug sentences increased by over 32%. Last November, the state OxyContin and Heroin Commission warned that drug addiction was now a public health epidemic. When Columbia University analyzed the impact of substance abuse on state budgets, researchers bluntly stated their findings. In 2005 almost 22% of Massachusetts’ budget was spent on “shovel[ing] up the wreckage of substance abuse and addiction,” mainly for healthcare, the criminal justice system and schools. Sadly, treatment programs accounted for less than 2% of that amount.
A modest proposal.
In 2009 the Senate passed a sentencing reform bill that would allow drug offenders to be eligible for parole at an earlier date. The bill was supported by the Executive Office of Public Safety, the Department of Correction, the Parole Board and several county sheriffs. Those officials know a thing or two about who should – and should not – be behind bars.
Eligibility for parole is a modest proposal. It would not stem the flow of drug offenders being sent to prison for long mandatory sentences. But it would offer some discretionary relief for those prisoners who are serving overly harsh sentences and pose no threat to public safety. The Parole Board would make the final decision on a case-by-case basis.
One more thing: school zones.
When the House takes up sentencing reform, it should improve on the Senate bill by reforming the “school zone” law, a particularly egregious form of mandatory sentence. This law applies to any drug offense committed within 1,000 feet of a school – more than the length of three football fields. It applies at any time of day or day of the week. A school zone violation carries a mandatory sentence of two to 15 years, which must be served after completing any sentence for the drug offense itself.
The law was enacted even though Massachusetts already has tough penalties for drug offenses involving children. Studies on the law’s impact revealed that the vast majority of school zone cases don’t even involve children. Instead, the law creates an “urban effect” where city dwellers are punished more harshly than suburban or rural residents who commit the same offense. Not surprisingly, this translates into appalling racial disparities.
As so many other states have come to realize, we cannot sustain the skyrocketing rate of corrections costs. Our tax dollars should be spent in a way that makes communities safer, not poorer. Allowing drug offenders to be eligible for parole is a controlled yet effective way to start.
Barbara J. Dougan
Massachusetts Project Director
Families Against Mandatory Minimums
www.famm.org
the right wing’s wet dream. Unfortunately, they make terrible correctional sense and end up costing society in the long run. In short, they’re bullshit.
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p>When I was still working for the DOC, I had an inmate in class who was finishing up a 25-year sentence for pot. That’s right. Pot. He was, by WISC, mentally retarded, but after years of instruction and incredible amounts of hard work on his part, he finally passed his GED. Bar none, it was the most gratifying moment of my educational career. This man was not a menace to society in any way, he was a gentle giant in every respect, but 25 years later ( no parole eligibility with mandatory minimums) he was a man released from prison with no skills. I shudder to think where he is now.
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p>The sad thing is Massachusetts is more progressive than some states. Imagine. Just imagine.
According to this doc (pdf), the MA prison population is 10,000 and the total MA population is 6,500,000. That means that 0.15% of our population is in prison, one third of the national average.
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p>Of the 3790 people sentenced in MA in 2008:
male drug: 789 people, 49.5 month projected prison time
male OUI: 38 people, 37.5 month projected prison time
female drug: 249 people, 16.6 month projected prison time
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p>total drug and OUI: 1076, 28.4% of the convictions, 41.5 month projected prison time weighted mean. This does not include the fraction of the 376 men and women who were convicted for violating parole because of a drug conviction, etc.
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p>Interestingly, the total projected prison time for all crimes was 38.8 months — less than the overall drug projected time.
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p>The data I see don’t bear out this claim. The mean drug sentence for men (which is much larger than women) was 58.4 months — that’s less than 5 years. That includes the non “low level, non-violent drug offenders”. So if the average is under 5 years and that includes the worst cases, I’m deeply skeptical of your claim. I’m not claiming that it never happens, but “routinely”?
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p>This is a sorta-kinda, because “often” is flexible enough. For men, drug sentencing time averaged 58.4 months — assault averaged 67.4, sex crimes 98.5, robbery 61.3, and weapons charges 67.1 months… all higher. But, the means are close enough to suggest plenty of overlap, enough to make “often” correct, if not somewhat overplaying the cards.
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p>This is not to say I disagree with the cause — I don’t at all. I think drug sentences are far too long (and perhaps violence sentences too short, I’m not sure). I also think that more/all of the sentence should be served out in rehab, including better rehab and oversight on the transition from leaving full incarceration to being a wholly free citizen. I think the school zone laws are horrible, and my instincts are that treating addicts is far cheaper, more effective, and more humane than incarceration.
Thank you, stomv, for being interested enough in this topic to do further research. Perhaps I can clarify some of your concerns.
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p>Overall incarceration rates: As of January 1, 2009, there were 10,342 state prisoners. But don’t forget the prisoners in county facilities – about 14,000 of them. Massachusetts now has about 25,000 prisoners in state or county custody, an all-time high.
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p>Those 25,000 prisoners are adults. If we want to look at the issue from the percentage of the population that is incarcerated, we need to compare adult populations, not the total population of the state. But even then, where does that get us? Is our goal to be not as bad as the worst states? Instead, I’d suggest that we emulate a state like New York, which decided to reduce the demand for illegal drugs by embracing treatment as the more effective tool. Or Rhode Island and Michigan, which have repealed most mandatory drug sentencing laws.
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p>The state’s Sentencing Commission reports that in 2008 (the most recent data available), 36 people received mandatory sentences in the 7 to 15 year range. The commission also tells us that about 60% of the people who received mandatory sentences – both overall as well as those in the 7 to 15 year range – were in the lowest two “criminal history groups,” i.e., those with few or no prior offenses, or whose prior offenses were low level. Surely we can find a better use for the hundreds of thousands of tax dollars that it takes to keep people like that locked up for so long.
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p>P.S. I hadn’t seen the report you are using. I was amazed by the misstatement that Massachusetts judges can impose a sentence below the mandatory minimum if they provide written reasons. Not so! Neither the guidelines nor that proposal were ever enacted.
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p>Barbara J. Dougan
Massachusetts Project Director
Families Against Mandatory Minimums
http://www.famm.org
Barbara — many thanks.
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p>You just did some awesome things, things that most folks get woefully wrong.
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p>Sure, the initial diary was good, better than average. It was well thought out, included some facts, and even your website. You even used “the flip” well, something our editors don’t even seem to get right all of the time. Some links to the data sources would have been a bonus, but no sweat.
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p>Thing is, lots of folks get that right. But then what happened? Some guy like me — who has no real knowledge of the topic du jour — went and made a post, based on a combination of thought, facts, and mistakes and oversights. Then, what did you do?
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p>You read the post carefully. You thoughtfully responded with corrections without being overbearing or confrontational. You showed appreciation for the conversation. You took the opportunity to win allies with kindness and with evidence.
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p>I’ve been hanging around BMG a long time, and I can’t recall ever seeing an interaction from a special-interest diarist as informative, productive, and pleasant as yours.
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p>Thank you.
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p>As for the content itself, I’m convinced. Cool!
We never had a prayer of winning the War on Drugs. We should find another way to reduce drug use, because this way is demonstrably a failure. As with Prohibition, the societal costs are largely because of the illegality, not because of the use of drugs.
As an Assistant District Attorney, and more recently as a trial attorney in private practice, I have seen firsthand the impact of the strict application of the mandatory minimum sentencing structure in Massachusetts. It is both intellectually dishonest and politically gratuitous to suggest that these laws have solved in any substantive way the drug addiction epidemic in our society, or have been an effective crime prevention and control strategy. It is time for a more thoughtful and progressive approach to these issues, one which incorporates presumptive sentencing and provides for diversion for first time offenders, in-patient treatment and prevention.
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p>There’s an economic reality we have to face, as well. The Commonwealth’s prisons are seriously overcrowded: county facilities are more than 161% over capacity and state prisons are 144% over capacity. Changing mandatory sentencing guidelines could free up $25 million annually, which could then be used to restore funding to anti-gang efforts and provide an adequate number of drug treatment beds (male and female). We can also reduce long term incarceration costs and still allow for cuts of at least $10 million in the state corrections budget. This will be one of my priorities if elected to the state senate this spring.
Prohibition of alchohol was good… for Al Capone.
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p>Why are some poor, urban neighborhoods so dangerous?
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p>Because of the gangs.
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p>The gangs are business orginizations, dealing drugs to make money. They kill each other and sometimes others to defend their “turf”, to be a monopoly on drug sales at a certain location.
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p>When was the last time you heard of liquor store owners shooting each other?
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p>If drugs were legalized and taxed, these gangs would be out of business and would disintegrate. There would still be “lone-nut” killers and crimes of passion, but no gang-to-gang shootings, because there would be no “turf” to fight over.
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p>And addicts could get treatment for themselves, with professionals. THe cost of this is PUNY compared to the cost of jailing people.
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p>These are general observations on my part and are not based on any sepecific person, group of people, city, or town.
I’m not suggesting that they’re wrong or even not useful, but I do find them lacking.
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p>Firstly, there’s no reason why we can’t decouple legality with treatment. We could change laws regarding treatment substantially while keeping the drugs themselves illegal. This ranges from more treatment and less prison time for users (but not dealers or the violent) of drugs to changing reporting laws so that those seeking treatment are secure in not inviting future investigations, to simply making public health policy fund more drug treatment in the first place. We could change Rx advertising laws to reduce the amount of manufactured demand for prescription drugs which can be abused by the patient or sold to others.
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p>Secondly, the tax argument is a weak one. If the tax is at all substantial, the black market will offer a cheaper product. The easiest example is pot — why would I pay any substantial tax on it when I could just grow it in my back yard, or buy marijuana cigarettes from the enterprising kid down the street? Recreational users may not be willing to risk the danger of an unregulated drug even to save a few bucks, but the addicts? They’ll get their fix, even if dangerous. That there are folks buying smack illegally now demonstrate that.
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p>Legalizing drugs sure would save money in enforcing drug laws, but it’s not at all obvious to me that the other ramifications, including the perception of drugs being safer, increased availability, marketing, and so on would result in a decrease in the tremendous loss drug use exerts on society.
Why did we de-criminalize pot – but not the distribution. All this did was create legal demand with an illegal distribution channel. Doesn’t anyone remember the growth of gangs during prohibition.
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p>It seems as though we release violet offenders and imprison drug users.
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