New York Times
4 January 2010

Editorial: Prisons and Budgets

The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world's population, has about one-quarter of its prisoners. But the relentless rise in the nation's prison population has suddenly slowed as many states discover that it is simply too expensive to overincarcerate.

Between 1987 and 2007 the prison population nearly tripled, from 585,000 to almost 1.6 million. Much of that increase occurred in states -- many with falling crime rates -- that had adopted overly harsh punishment policies, such as the "three strikes and you're out" rule and drug laws requiring that nonviolent drug offenders be locked away.

These policies have been hugely costly. According to the Pew Center on the States, state spending from general funds on corrections increased from $10.6 billion in 1987 to more than $44 billion in 2007, a 127 percent increase in inflation-adjusted dollars. In the same period, adjusted spending on higher education increased only 21 percent.

In 2008, the explosion of the prison population ground to a near halt, according to data released last month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. About 739,000 inmates were admitted to federal and state facilities, only about 3,500 more than were released.

One factor seems to be tight budgets as states decide to release nonviolent offenders early. This can not only save money. If done correctly, it can also be very sound social policy. Many nonviolent offenders can be dealt with more effectively and more cheaply through treatment and jobs programs.

Michigan, which has been hard hit by the recession, has done a particularly good job of releasing people who do not need to be in prison. As the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project details in a new report, Michigan reduced its prison population by about
8 percent between March 2007 and November 2009 by taking smart steps, notably doing more to get nonviolent drug offenders out, while helping in their transition to a productive, and crime-free, life.

Not every state has gotten the message. Florida, for example, has a state law mandating that all prisoners serve a high percentage of their sentence, which is both dubious corrections policy and terrible fiscal policy.

For many years, driving up prison populations has been an easy thing for elected officials to do, popular with voters and powerful corrections officer unions. The new incarceration figures suggest, however, that in the current hard economic times, strapped states are beginning to realize that they do not have the money to keep people in prison who do not need to be there.

----

To download the referenced ACLU report
"Michigan Breaks the Political Logjam: A New Model for Reducing Prison
Populations": http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2009-12-18-MichiganReport.pdf

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From: Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy [mailto:caleb@cssdp.org]
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 1:14 PM
To: Haden, Mark [VC]
Subject: Bill C-15 Update: Gone, but not forgotten

Hey Mark, Big news in the fight against bad drug policy!  The Conservative government has decided to suspend, or 'prorogue' Parliament until March 3rd.  This means that all Bills at the House and Senate, including Bill C-15, are officially dead. The good news is that we, along with allies in the drug policy reform movement were successful in delaying this bill from becoming law before the prorogation of Parliament. Thank you for your help in defeating Bill C-15! This doesn’t mean we are in the clear however. In announcing that the Throne Speech would not be until March 3th, the Prime Minister’s Office made their plan to re-introduce Bill C-15 very clear. Here is the message from the Prime Minister: “We will reintroduce in their original form the consumer safety law (Bill C-6) and the anti-drug-crime law (Bill C-15) that the Ignatieff Liberals gutted. We will seek Opposition agreement to proceed expeditiously with other Government legislation -- particularly laws urgently needed to fight crime -- that the Ignatieff Liberals have blocked and obstructed.” With Harper expected to appoint 5 new Senators this week, the now Liberal dominated Senate will be a Conservative dominated Senate once Parliament resumes. Therefore, the fight is not over and we have to continue to spread our message: If we want to be serious about protecting our youth, we have to stop talking about mandatory minimum sentences and start talking about evidence based drug policies. Some form of this bill will re-emerge at the House of Commons. We’ve been here before. Bill C-26 died during the previous prorogation and re-emerged in harsher form as Bill C-15. Therefore, we must keep up the pressure against this harmful drug policy. Keep calling and writing your Members of Parliament! Those who voted against C-15 need to be congratulated and encouraged to keep up the fight while those who voted in favour of C-15 need to know that you don't support mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes or the 'tough on crime' propaganda.  Keep writing the papers, calling the radio shows, and let them know the many reasons why it’s time to get smart on crime! CSSDP will continue to fight the use of mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes in Canadian policy in the House and in the streets.  Check out our website regularly for updates and strategy tips.    Happy New Year! Caleb Chepesiuk Director Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy office: 613-729-5505       cell: 613-297-8792 www.cssdp.org

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http://www.idpc.net/alerts/call-for-submissions-drug-policy-encyclopedia?utm_source=IDPC+Monthly+Alert&utm_campaign=7497e36f16-IDPC_December_Alert12_22_2009&utm_medium=email

 

Call for authors: Encyclopedia of Drug Policy
Academic editorial contributors are being sought for the Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, a new 2-volume reference to be published in 2011 by SAGE Publications

 

 

http://www.theprovince.com/health/SALOME+staff+provide+free+heroin+addicts/2355445/story.html

The following is a response from Craig jones  Executive Director of the John Howard society to a  letter written to the Winnipeg sun.
 

 

 

 Dear Mr. Banek:

Thanks for writing to the Winnipeg Sun.

People need to understand that there is more than one option where illicit drugs are concerned.

Here’s mine: Not legalization, RE-regulation. The difference is important.

I have never endorsed legalization — but I do call for re-regulation.

In public policy, “regulation” means management according to some rational and revisable criteria, rather than by random, chaotic chance.

Most of the modern world regulates everything that comes into contact with citizens: from securities to radio bandwith, from milk to banks to air-travel safety to telecommunications to food production to children’s toys to drinking water. Everything that touches us is regulated according to some criteria embedded in laws, enforceable – ultimately – by the state.

These things are all legal, but they’re also heavily regulated. Just try to sell unpasteurized milk from your own cows to your next door neighbour.

By and large, most regulations work pretty well. We do have our Walkertons and our Dr. Charles Smith events, but these are few and far between. Regulation has its critics but it prevents a lot of McCain food-like disasters.

We regulate everything according to criteria specific to the product or service and its impact on public well being. Different forms of regulation for different products and services, whether Goodyear Tires or Tupperware.

These regulations are informed by statistics and other forms of evidence. We would never consider regulating something – like smoke alarms or baby formula – without having a great deal of evidence about how those regulations will or will not produce benefit rather than harm.

Regulation is about rationality and predictability. It’s about understanding the balance of harms and benefits and creating the conditions to maximize benefits and minimize harms.

This, at least, is how political scientists (like me) understand regulation.

With regard to illicit drugs, we use a form of regulation called “prohibition.” Prohibition relies on punishment and threat of punishment through the criminal justice system.

Prohibition is supposed to work through the magic of deterrence. You won’t touch drugs because you know that if you get busted you’ll get a criminal record and your life chances will be negatively affected.

We do with illicit drugs, in other words, what was once done with alcohol – and with the same results: violence, corruption, graft and death.

In essence -- and this is the point – we regulate the production, distribution and consumption of illicit drugs by handing it over to the contest between organized crime and police.

As a consequence, organized crime is thriving. Prices to users are lower, supply is better and purity is higher than 40 years ago when Richard Nixon declared his “war on drugs.”

Quoting from a recent court ruling here in Ontario: “People have been going to jail for drug offences for – for a couple of generations now and the drug – the drug plague is worse than it ever was ... If something doesn't work, do I try doing it again and again to see if it does work? Isn't that the definition of insanity?”

The big crime syndicates have Spanish names today. Instead of Al Capone it’s Miguel Caro Quintero. Instead of alcohol, it’s cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis and meth.

Big seizures are made on a weekly basis, yet supply is unaffected – and a handful of powerful organized criminal groups get fabulously wealthy: enough to literally outgun police and military forces in Mexico and to purchase the government of Afghanistan.

Illicit drug profits constitute the oxygen of organized crime – globally, nationally and locally.

These are facts you can confirm with the UN World Drug Report

www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2009.html

Prohibition fails because it attempts to negate the iron laws of supply and demand.

So this form of regulation – called prohibition -- enriches organized crime but does nothing to address demand, i.e., reduce the flow of drugs to users on the street. It brings with it lots of violence, deaths by overdose, disease transmission, police corruption, swollen prisons, etc.

Prohibition is a policy choice, not a law of nature like gravity. We chose to use prohibition in 1908 for racist purposes and we’ve only added to it and built on it since.

The worst effect of drug prohibition is that it creates incentives for our political leaders to lie to us – and to make promises they know they can’t keep.

And the same is true of police: in private they admit that (in their words), “We’ll never arrest out way out of our drug problems” but in public they have to play the prohibition game even though they will admit (in private) that drug prohibition corrupts cops and destroys the profession.

Prohibition CREATES crime. Always has and always will.

Don’t take my word for it: see www.leap.cc/cms/index.php – these people are not nut-cases. They have seen the harm of drug prohibition and have crossed over.

See this excellent essay by Gil Puder – who used to work to the downtown eastside of Vancouver: www.leap.cc/publications/puderempirestrikes.pdf

More recently, see this video of the Senate Testimony of Constable David Bratzer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=173LZbyWCOU


My claim here is that prohibition -- as a form of regulation -- produces so many undesirable consequences that we ought to abandon it and choose a form of regulation that gives us more of what we want and less of what we don’t want.

What I want less of – much less of – is organized crime, drug gangs and drug-business criminality.

What I want more of – much more of – is education, prevention, harm reduction, public health and community safety.

So I favour a form of regulation that would NOT create incentives for organized criminal gangs to control the drug trade – because, for me, organized crime and drug gangs are the worst of all evils.

Not everyone will agree with this. Everyone who studies this issue agrees that prohibition gives rise to organized criminal violence – but some people are willing to tolerate a certain amount of violence by organized crime because they think that, eventually, we’ll figure out how to apply the right police resources to eradicate it once and for all.

I’m doubtful. We’ve been at it for 101 years and we’re no closer. Not even the Americans, who employ much greater police force and violence, have been successful.

So I would endorse a system of RE-regulation – there are many models on offer – that took the production, distribution and consumption of currently illicit drugs out of the hands of organized crime.

Does this imply legalization?

It could, for some substances, but it does not HAVE to.

It all depends on what we – as a society – choose to regulate in the interests of public safety versus that which we leave to organized crime.

And that depends on how much we are willing to tolerate the participation of organized crime because – on the evidence of the last 101 years – they are going to meet a market demand whatever the penalties enacted in prohibitionist laws.

Virtually every government-commissioned analysis of drug policy in the 20th-Century has agreed that cannabis should never have been criminalized in the first place.

So cannabis should – on the evidence – be decriminalized and regulated so as to control for quality, purity and access to young persons.

My preference is to regulate AGAINST the interests of organized criminal gangs – but there are other ways to regulate too, to trade off competing values where drugs are concerned.

So that’s it: if it were up to me I would design a system of regulation which sucked the oxygen out of the black market and took the profit out of supplying the market for currently illicit drugs. That would be my priority.
--

Craig Jones, Ph.D. | Executive Director
The John Howard Society of Canada
809 Blackburn Mews, Kingston, Ontario, K7P 2N6
email: cjones@johnhoward.ca
Tel: 613.384.6272 | Fax: 613.384.1847
http://www.johnhoward.ca/
--

"I think what was truly depressing about my time in [the UK’s] Anti-Drug Coordination Unit was that the overwhelming majority of professionals I met, including those from the police, the health service, the government and voluntary sectors held the same view: the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves.”
    ~ Julian Critchley, former director of the Cabinet Office's Anti-Drug Coordination Unit, quoted in “Ex-drugs policy director calls for legalisation,” The Manchester Guardian, Wednesday, August 13, 2008.

 

 

From: ccc-members@yahoogroups.com [mailto:ccc-members@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of paquettemarc
Sent: December-17-09 6:16 AM
To: ccc-members@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [CCC] MB: LTE: CUT JOHN HOWARD FUNDING

 

The Winnipeg Sun

Letters to the Editor: letters@wpgsun.com

Thursday, December 17, 2009


CUT JOHN HOWARD FUNDING


Re: 'What's their plan?' Tom Brodbeck, Dec. 13.

Why are tax dollars being used to fund a group committed to the legalization of hard core drugs?

The John Howard Society is a collection of misfits who have been running interference on law and order by advocating for criminals and their lawyers.

If they want to take that position in public that's their right and they are free to do so, but we are not obligated to pay for it.

Use your head for a change and cut their funding Harper, or do you secretly agree with them?

BARRY BANEK

WINNIPEG

Misfits? We don't agree.

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Please circulate.

Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) is focused on three integrated components of health care: Acute, Community and Primary Health. VCH operates 102 health care centres in 17 municipalities, including BC's largest hospital and one of Canada's largest research institutes. Our specialties include Trauma, Neurosciences, Bone Marrow Transplants, Burns and Plastics, Solid Organ Transplant, Public/Community Health and Mental Health. Our talented, dedicated health care teams characterize the cultures and lifestyles of our coastal mountain communities and the city of Vancouver.

Job Title:	Parent/Family Prevention Specialist
Work Site:	Youth Alcohol & Drug - 520 West 6th - Vancouver, BC
Status:	Regular Full-Time
Start Date:	As Soon as Possible
Salary:	$27.18 - $33.88 per hour
Hours:	0800 - 1630 (Mon-Fri)
Reference#:	031300

JOB SUMMARY:

Within the context of a client and family centered, strengths-based care model, and in accordance with established standards of professional practice and the vision and values of Vancouver Coastal Health Youth Addictions & Prevention Services, the Parent/Family Prevention Specialist will plan and implement proactive approaches to support the prevention of youth’s problematic substance use by working primarily with parents and families. Partners with prevention initiatives in schools and allied staff to develop and implement relevant programming that will strengthen parent/family awareness, knowledge and skills to prevent, delay and intervene with respect to adolescent substance use. Provides brief intervention counseling services as required.

QUALIFICATIONS:

Bachelors Degree in an Allied Health discipline from a recognized program. Two (2) years recent related experience providing counseling/treatment of substance misuse to children/youth. Valid BC Drivers License. Local area travel requires the use of a personal vehicle.

Thorough knowledge in child/youth care development, behaviour management as it relates to addiction and substance misuse.
Ability to develop and implement strength-based, client-centered prevention programs or related programming.
Ability to perform a range of needs assessments with both individuals and groups.
Knowledge of community development, adult education and health promotion practices.
Ability to develop, facilitate workshops.
Demonstrated ability to establish and maintain supportive, trusting and professional relationships with youth and adults.
Demonstrated ability to establish and maintain effective work relationships.
Demonstrated ability to prepare and maintain a variety of charts, records and reports.
Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing.
Demonstrated ability to organize and prioritize workload and adapt to a changing community.
Physical ability to perform the duties of the position.

Successful applicants may be required to complete a Criminal Records Review Check.

Short-listed candidates will be contacted; others will be kept in our database for future consideration.

***Employees of VCH who apply to this posting using this site will be considered with other external candidates. Seniority will not apply.***

Thank you for your interest in Vancouver Coastal Health.

JFTHP WS2 WS4 City_Vancouver

 

Job posting online here: http://jobs.workopolis.com/jobshome/db/vcha.job_posting?pi_job_id=9477842

 

 

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to call your attention to HCLU's new video, "After the War on Drugs", filmed at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Mexico:

http://drogriporter.hu/en/afterthewar

Please distribute it among your peers.

Best regards,

Peter Sarosi

Drug Policy Program Director

Hungarian Civil Liberties Union

Tel.: +36 1 279 2236

www.drugreporter.net

P please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to.

 

 http://praguemonitor.com/2009/12/15/possession-15-grammes-marijuana-be-legal-new-year

 

SALOME staff to set up free-heroin clinic before Olympics
By Elaine O'Connor
The Province
December 18, 2009

The legal drugs trade is pulling in high profits
By Eithne Shortall
Times (UK)
December 20, 2009

Teens Think Smoking More Dangerous Than Drinking, Drugs
Survey results suggest they might be more likely to try alcohol, illegal drugs
BusinessWeek
December 17, 2009

Throwing some light on the marijuana grow-op problem
By Mindelle Jacobs
The Kingston Whig Standard
December 20, 2009

The Prague Post
December 9, 2009

Police plan cannabis raids

'Alarming' rate of use among young Czechs puts country at top of EU study's list

By Tom Clifford - Staff Writer

The police are preparing a nationwide crackdown on cannabis in the new year in the wake of a European Union report that puts the Czech Republic at the top of the league for cannabis use among 15- to 24-year-olds.

The police have already sent out 30,000 letters to residents of the Karlovy Vary region in west Bohemia, where many cannabis farms are located, asking people to report suspicious activity.

The government is preparing tougher anti-drug legislation to be introduced in the new year, but the specific amounts a person may have on them deemed for personal use will be decided in the coming weeks.

The report by the Lisbon-based European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction estimates cannabis has been used at least once by around
74 million Europeans - more than one in five of all 15- to 64-year-olds.

Almost 44 percent of Czechs in the 15-24 age bracket have used cannabis at least once, the highest prevalence in the EU, the report states.
France, Denmark and Germany are the next highest.

More than 29 percent of this demographic admit to using cannabis in the past year, again placing the country at No. 1, ahead of Spain, Italy and France.

While Education Ministry spokesman Tomáš Bouška described the report's findings as "alarming," he said the drug problem is an issue for society in general and not just the education authorities.

"Combating drug abuse among students is a top priority of the ministry, but this cannot be done in isolation. We need the help of families to tackle this menace," he said.

Combating cannabis use requires manpower the police admit they do not have.

"We are trying to locate and close the cannabis farms that have been spreading around the Czech Republic," said Michal Hammer, spokesman for the National Drug Squad. "The people who run them are mostly Asians, and the quantities are huge. For example, one farm we closed produced 1,500-2,000 plants annually. We sent 30,000 letters to people in the Karlovy Vary region telling them what is going on and how they can help prevent it. In total, there are 450 police officers in the National Drug Squad, which is obviously not enough, but we still closed 79 farms last year and 50 so far this year."

Police are gearing up to enforce a tougher line against drug users in 2010 when legislation, yet to be introduced, comes into force. But, while the police are on the frontline in the battle, the root cause is society's tolerance of drugs, according to squad head Jakub Frydrych.

"Unfortunately, the Czech Republic is undergoing a period when drug availability and usage is tolerated not only by a large part of society, but also by the media. The drug-taking situation is not only a matter for the police department."

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

Tom Clifford can be reached at
tclifford@praguepost.com
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