Showing posts with label prisons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prisons. Show all posts

November 22, 2008

Texas hearing on Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales indictment turns chaotic

02:12 PM CST on Friday, November 21, 2008
Associated Press


RAYMONDVILLE, Texas — A county prosecutor who brought indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others pounded his fist and shouted at the judge Friday about special treatment for high-profile defendants as a routine motions hearing descended into chaos.

Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra, who is accusing the public officials of culpability in the alleged abuse of prisoners in a federal detention center, asked Presiding Judge Manuel Banales to recuse himself. Guerra has complained about Banales' handling of the case.

Attorneys for the vice president and other defendants leapt to their feet in objection, as Guerra pounded the table and accused Banales of giving the defendants special treatment in allowing motions to quash the indictments to be heard before the defendants were arraigned.

"Now all of a sudden there is urgency," Guerra shouted. "Eighteen months you kept me indicted through the election." The charges against Guerra were dismissed in October. Guerra lost re-election in the March Democratic primary.

Banales called a recess to contact the chief justice of the state Supreme Court for suggestions on how to proceed, and ordered Guerra, who had slipped out once before in the hearing, to remain in the courthouse.

"I will not obey that order," Guerra said. When Banales implied he would take steps to keep Guerra in court, Guerra agreed to stay if the judge asked him respectfully.

Unlike the initial hearing Wednesday when Guerra was absent and media and attorneys for the indicted appeared in equal numbers, curious residents packed the well-worn pews of the Willacy County Courthouse's only courtroom Friday.

Half of the indictments returned Monday are linked to privately run federal detention centers in the sparsely populated southern Texas county. The other half target judges and special prosecutors who played a role in an earlier investigation of Guerra.

Banales appointed a special prosecutor to handle the local officials indicted along with Cheney, Gonzales and state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, because Guerra has sparred with them for years.

The vice president is the highest public official Guerra has pursued, but he made a nearly 20-year-career of passing over routine crimes in favor of public corruption before being defeated in the March Democratic primary election.

It was Guerra's interest in the contracts to build and run a federal detention center that led to some of his biggest successes _ three guilty pleas on bribery charges from former county commissioners in 2005. But he also believes it was the motivation for his own legal battles.

Guerra responded to his theft arrest by camping outside the courthouse with farm animals in protest. He continued working for more than a year while under indictment on charges of extorting money from a bail bond company and using his office for personal business until Banales dismissed the indictment last month.

Guerra ran the current investigation into alleged prisoner abuse with a siege mentality. He worked it from his home, dubbed it "Operation Goliath" and kept it secret from his staff, he said. He gave all the witnesses biblical pseudonyms - his was "David" - and sometimes gave false reasons for witnesses' appearances so as not to raise suspicion in a courthouse he believed to be filled with political enemies. A clerk and a judge who share the building were among those indicted Monday.

The grand jury also charged Lucio with illegally profiting from prison consulting fees.
The GEO Group Corp. was indicted on a murder charge for the death of an inmate at a federal prison.

"The indictment is the product of prosecutorial vindictiveness and is void on its face," defense attorney Tony Canales, who represents the private prison operator, wrote in a motion. Canales is also the legal representative for Cheney and Gonzales.

Another indictment alleges that Cheney's personal investment in the Vanguard Group, which invests in private prison companies, gives him culpability in alleged prisoner abuse.

Other indictments charge two district judges, two special prosecutors and the Willacy County district clerk with abusing their powers in investigating Guerra's office.

The defendants did need to appear in person Friday.

November 21, 2008

Cheney's lawyer files motion to quash indictment

By Lynn Brezosky and Peggy Fikac / San Antonio Express-News

RAYMONDVILLE - Some of the top names in South Texas legal defense converged at the Willacy County courthouse with briefcases and a sense of conviviality about indictments reaching as far as the White House.

Lawyers like J.A. "Tony" Canales, a former U.S. attorney who is representing Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, said they hoped to get a range of charges brought by embattled District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra quickly dismissed.

Guerra, a 53-year-old Rio Grande Valley prosecutor who drew national attention for suing counterparts in the county justice system and staging a protest with barnyard animals, long has alleged high-ranking corruption in the deals that brought the impoverished county a $60 million immigration detention center.

On Monday, he got a grand jury to sign off on a slew of indictments including an acceptance of honorarium charge against state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., and an engaging in organized criminal activity charge against Cheney and Gonzales.

Cheney is accused of contributing to the neglect of federal immigration detainees by contracting for-profit prisons.

“By working through corporations as prisons for profit, Defendant Richard Cheney has committed at least misdemeanor assaults of our inmates and/or detainees,” the indictment reads, adding that a “money trail” can be traced to Cheney's substantial investments in the Vanguard Group, which invests in privately run prisons.

This morning, Canales filed a motion to quash indictments "for prosecutorial vindictiveness and failure to allege an offense."

"In most of the indictments, the prosecutor identifies himself as the victim. The prosecutor has usurped for himself the role of prosecutor, judge, victim, and director of the grand jury. His conflict of interest and abuse of office require that he be stopped," Canales said.

Courthouse officials said Guerra had not been seen today.

A number of experts were shaking their heads at the indictment.

Shannon Edmonds of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, after reviewing a faxed copy of the indictment against Cheney and Gonzales, said he’d never seen one like it.

“It’s a creative indictment, but I don’t think it properly alleges any crime,” Edmonds said. “It’s more of just a rambling narrative … I think a court will find that it’s legally insufficient in that it fails to allege a crime.”

Chip B. Lewis, a prominent criminal defense lawyer in Houston whose clients have included former Enron chairman Ken Lay, said, “It’s a shame. I’m not a Cheney supporter by any means. I’m Democrat. But the misuse of our criminal justice system is apparent … It just smacks of partisanship and it’s a shame that credence can be lent to this type of charge because you have a grand jury indictment.”

Lewis said, “I don’t think he (Cheney) will ever spend a day in court.”


November 19, 2008


By ABC 13

McALLEN, TX -- A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County's federal detention centers.

The indictment criticizes Cheney's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees by working through the prison companies.

Gonzales is accused of using his position while in office to stop an investigation into abuses at the federal detention centers.

Another indictment charges state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. with profiting from his public office by accepting honoraria from prison management companies.

From comments:
a president cannot be indicted while in office BUT that rule does NOT apply to a sitting Vice President, who can be indicted and prosecuted for his role in the commission of war crimes in Iraq and lying the nation into an aggressive illegal war of aggression, the supreme crime against humanity as defined at Nuremberg, Click Here, http://kucinich.house.gov/SpotlightIssues/documents.htm


March 31, 2008

Another neocon detail to deal with - the WAR on drugs



It is RUMORED (hahaha) that another act of the Canadian neocons will be to criminalize ALL "illegal" drug usage - that means THEY control the drugs AND that young people doomed to long jail sentences would be glad to sign up for military service . the "either sign or you get raped in a prison" option.

Never put anything past the slimey neocons, Nothing. No matter what it costs the taxpayer, as the money in their minds is THEIRS, THEIRS, THEIRS once they get in, even as a MINORITY government.



The first official trailer from the long awaited "AMERICAN DRUG WAR" from sacredcow-com

35 years after Nixon started the war on drugs, we have over one million non-violent drug offenders living behind bars.The War on Drugs has become the longest and most costly war in American history, the question has become, how much more can the country endure? Inspired by the death of four family members from "legal drugs" Texas filmmaker Kevin Booth sets out to discover why the Drug War has become such a big failure.

Three and a half years in the making, the film follows gang members, former DEA agents, CIA officers, narcotics officers, judges, politicians, prisoners and celebrities.

Most notably the film befriends Freeway Ricky Ross; the man many accuse for starting the Crack epidemic, who after being arrested discovered that his cocaine source had been working for the CIA.AMERICAN DRUG WAR shows how money, power and greed have corrupted not just drug pushers and dope fiends, but an entire government. More importantly, it shows what can be done about it.

This is not some 'pro-drug' stoner film, but a collection of expert testimonials from the ground troops on the front lines of the drug war, the ones who are fighting it and the ones who are living it.

After 4 years of production including several sold out test screenings in New York, Austin & Los Angeles, the final version of American Drug War "the last white hope" is locked and loaded

March 27, 2008

Is an International Financial Conspiracy Driving World Events?

By Richard C. Cook


Global Research, March 27, 2008

"They make a desolation and call it peace." -Tacitus

Was Alan Greenspan really as dumb as he looks in creating the late housing bubble that threatens to bring the entire Western debt-based economy crashing down?

Was something as easy to foresee as this really the trigger for a meltdown that could destroy the world's financial system? Or was it done, perhaps, "accidentally on purpose"?

And if so, why?

Let's turn to the U.S. personage that conspiracy theorists most often mention as being at the epicenter of whatever elite plan is reputed to exist. This would be David Rockefeller, the 92-year-old multibillionaire godfather of the world's financial elite.


The lengthy Wikipedia article on Rockefeller provides the following version of a celebrated statement he allegedly made in an opening speech at the Bilderberg conference in Baden-Baden, Germany, in June 1991:

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during these years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government which will never again know war, but only peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in the past centuries."

This speech was made 17 years ago. It came at the beginning in the U.S. of the Bill Clinton administration. Rockefeller speaks of an "us." This "us," he says, has been having meetings for almost 40 years. If you add the 17 years since he gave the speech it was 57 years ago—two full generations.

Not only has "us" developed a "plan for the world," but the attempt to "develop" the plan has evidently been successful, at least in Rockefeller's mind. The ultimate goal of "us" is to create "the supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers." This will lead, he says, toward a "world government which will never again know war."

Just as an intellectual exercise, let's assume that David Rockefeller is as important and powerful a person as he seems to think he is. Let's give the man some credit and assume that he and "us" have in fact succeeded to a degree. This would mean that the major decisions and events since Rockefeller gave the speech in 1991 have probably also been part of the plan or that they have at least represented its features and intent.


Therefore by examining these decisions and events we can determine whether in fact Rockefeller is being truthful in his assessment that the Utopia he has in mind is on its way or has at least come closer to being realized. In no particular order, some of these decisions and events are as follows:

The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement by the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations has led to the elimination of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs as well as the destruction of U.S. family farming in favor of global agribusiness.

Similar free trade agreements, including those under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, have led to export of millions of additional manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere.

Average family income in the U.S. has steadily eroded while the share of the nation's wealth held by the richest income brackets has soared. Some Wall Street hedge fund managers are making $1 billion a year while the number of homeless, including war veterans, pushes a million.

The housing bubble has led to a huge inflation of real estate prices in the U.S. Millions of homes are falling into the hands of the bankers through foreclosure. The cost of land and rentals has further decimated family agriculture as well as small business. Rising property taxes based on inflated land assessments have forced millions of lower-and middle-income people and elderly out of their homes.

The fact that bankers now control national monetary systems in their entirety, under laws where money is introduced only through lending at interest, has resulted in a massive debt pyramid that is teetering on collapse. This "monetarist" system was pioneered by Rockefeller-family funded economists at the University of Chicago. The rub is that when the pyramid comes down and everyone goes bankrupt the banks which have been creating money "out of thin air" will then be able to seize valuable assets for pennies on the dollar, as J.P. Morgan Chase is preparing to do with the businesses owned by Carlyle Capital. Meaningful regulation of the financial industry has been abandoned by government, and any politician that stands in the way, such as Eliot Spitzer, is destroyed.

The total tax burden on Americans from federal, state, and local governments now exceeds forty percent of income and is rising. Today, with a recession starting, the Democratic-controlled Congress, while supporting the minuscule "stimulus" rebate, is hypocritically raising taxes further, even for middle-income earners. Back taxes, along with student loans, can no longer be eliminated by bankruptcy protection.

Gasoline prices are soaring even as companies like Exxon-Mobil are recording record profits. Other commodity prices are going up steadily, including food prices, with some countries starting to experience near-famine conditions. 40 million people in America are officially classified as "food insecure."

Corporate control of water and mineral resources has removed much of what is available from the public commons, and the deregulation of energy production has led to huge increases in the costs of electricity in many areas.

The destruction of family farming in the U.S. by NAFTA (along with family farming in Mexico and Canada) has been mirrored by policies toward other nations on the part of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Around the world, due to pressure from the "Washington consensus," local food self-sufficiency has been replaced by raising of crops primarily for export. Migration off the land has fed the population of huge slums around the cities of underdeveloped countries.

Since the 1980s the U.S. has been fighting wars throughout the world either directly or by proxy. The former Yugoslavia was dismembered by NATO. Under cover of 9/11 and by utilizing off-the-shelf plans, the U.S. is now engaged in the military conquest and permanent military occupation of the Middle East. A worldwide encirclement of Russia and China by U.S. and NATO forces is underway, and a new push to militarize space has begun. The Western powers are clearly preparing for at least the possibility of another world war.

The expansion of the U.S. military empire abroad is mirrored by the creation of a totalitarian system of surveillance at home, whereby the activities of private citizens are spied upon and tracked by technology and systems which have been put into place under the heading of the "War on Terror." Human microchip implants for tracking purposes are starting to be used. The military-industrial complex has become the nation's largest and most successful industry with tens of thousands of planners engaged in devising new and better ways, both overt and covert, to destroy both foreign and domestic "enemies."

Meanwhile, the U.S. has the largest prison population of any country on earth. Plus everyday life for millions of people is a crushing burden of government, insurance, and financial fees, charges, and paperwork. And the simplest business transactions are burdened by rake-offs for legions of accountants, lawyers, bureaucrats, brokers, speculators, and middlemen.

Finally, the deteriorating conditions of everyday life have given rise to an extraordinary level of stress-related disease, as well as epidemic alcohol and drug addiction. Governments themselves around the world engage in drug trafficking. Instead of working to lower stress levels, public policy is skewed in favor of an enormous prescription drug industry that grows rich off the declining level of health through treatment of symptoms rather than causes. Many of these heavily-advertised medications themselves have devastating side-effects.

This list should at least give us enough to go on in order to ask a hard question. Assuming again that all these things are parts of the elitist plan which Mr. Rockefeller boasts to have been developing, isn't it a little strange that the means which have been selected to achieve "peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity" involve so much violence, deception, oppression, exploitation, graft, and theft?

In fact it looks to me as though "our plan for the world" is one that is based on genocide, world war, police control of populations, and seizure of the world's resources by the financial elite and their puppet politicians and military forces.

In particular, could there be a better way to accomplish all this than what appears to be a concentrated plan to remove from people everywhere in the world the ability to raise their own food? After all, genocide by starvation may be slow, but it is very effective. Especially when it can be blamed on "market forces."

And can it be that the "us" which is doing all these things, including the great David Rockefeller himself, are just criminals who have somehow taken over the seats of power? If so, they are criminals who have done everything they can to watch their backs and cover their tracks, including a chokehold over the educational system and the monopolistic mainstream media.

One thing is certain: The voters of America have never knowingly agreed to any of this.


Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared on numerous websites. His book on monetary reform entitled We Hold These Truths: The Promise of Monetary Reform is in preparation. He is also the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, called by one reviewer, "the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years." His website is at
www.richardccook.com.



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March 10, 2008

NYT's Editorial: Prison Nation

Should the headline actually read - prisons now proving TOO EXPENSIVE? Never bothered them before, now did it? Or did some of their own relatives finally go to jail or something???

Or trying to find fresh bodies to line up for the new KBR forced prison labor camps??

Face it, the prison population began to EXPLODE due to Bill Clinton's expansion of the loss of CIVIL LIBERTIES. FACT.

See any mention here about the insanity of criminalization of POT? OR the lack of convictions of white collar criminals?

Let's bring on the tasers! The Stun guns! The Big Brother police monitoring! Let the systemic sadism transform to the "modern era"!

Although more realistic guidelines for drug sentencing were called for, not one person has been released as yet, as far as I know. Why don't they mention that? Are they afraid of The Supremos?

Score another one for two-tiered justice. Thanx NYT! Just made my friggin day. Bring on them Domestic Mercenaries! Just shoot them when they get outta line.


Veeger

After three decades of explosive growth, the nation’s prison population has reached some grim milestones: More than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men.

Nationwide, the prison population hovers at almost 1.6 million, which surpasses all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.

These statistics, contained in a new report from the Pew Center on the States, point to a terrible waste of money and lives. They underscore the urgent challenge facing the federal government and cash-strapped states to reduce their overreliance on incarceration without sacrificing public safety. The key, as some states are learning, is getting smarter about distinguishing between violent criminals and dangerous repeat offenders, who need a prison cell, and low-risk offenders, who can be handled with effective community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug treatment programs, combined in some cases with shorter sentences.

Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building and running jailhouses has become a major industry.

Criminal behavior partly explains the size of the prison population, but incarceration rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen. Any effort to reduce the prison population must consider the blunderbuss impact of get-tough sentencing laws adopted across the United States beginning in the 1970’s. Many Americans have come to believe, wrongly, that keeping an outsized chunk of the population locked up is essential for sustaining a historic crime drop since the 1990’s.

In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment and drug-abuse rates. States that lagged behind the national average in rising incarceration rates during the 1990’s actually experienced a steeper decline in crime rates than states above the national average, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group.

A rising number of states are broadening their criminal sanctions with new options for low-risk offenders that are a lot cheaper than incarceration but still protect the public and hold offenders accountable. In New York, the crime rate has continued to drop despite efforts to reduce the number of nonviolent drug offenders in prison.

The Pew report spotlights policy changes in Texas and Kansas that have started to reduce their outsized prison populations and address recidivism by investing in ways to improve the success rates for community supervision, expanding treatment and diversion programs, and increasing use of sanctions other than prison for minor parole and probation violations. Recently, the Supreme Court and the United States Sentencing Commission announced sensible changes in the application of harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences.

These are signs that the country may finally be waking up to the fiscal and moral costs of bulging prisons.


February 14, 2008

Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons


[video had to be removed]
Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?

By Deborah Davies

They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for Channel 4 . It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

More about this video:

Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons
Savaged By Dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals
Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?
Channel4
Produced and Directed By Nick London
Reporter Deborah Davies
March 2005
http://www.frif.com/new2005/brut.html
http://www.november.org/ stayinfo...TortureInc.html

The Use of Dogs for Cell Extractions in U.S. Prisons
October 11, 2006

Arizona training video showing how dogs were used for cell extractions. Unlike other states, in Arizona once the dog had a hold of the prisoner, the officers would pull on the dog’s leash and drag the dog and the prisoner, gripped by the dog's jaws, out of the cell.
Video provided to Human Rights Watch by the Arizona Department of Corrections. In late 2005, the director of the department issued a moratorium on the use of dogs for cell extractions. In March 2006, the moratorium was made permanent with a new rule prohibiting the use of dogs for this purpose.
http://hrw.org/campaigns/us/2006...s1006/ index.htm
(RealPlayer Presentation)
rtsp://humanrw.rmod.llnwd.net/a434/o2/2006/ AttackDogs/MAPrison512.rm

Video of a cell extraction with a dog in a Massachusetts prison provided to Human Rights Watch by attorneys for the inmate. According to the attorney, the inmate was mentally ill. In April 2006 the commissioner of the Department of Correction prohibited the use of dogs for cell extractions.
http://hrw.org/campaigns/us/2006...s1006/ index.htm
(RealPlayer Presentation)
rtsp://humanrw.rmod.llnwd.net/a434/o2/2006/ AttackDogs/MAPrison512.rm

This archive contains articles by Reader staff writer John Conroy, who has been covering police torture and related issues since 1990.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/pol...m/ policetorture

Cruel and Degrading
The Use of Dogs for Cell Extractions in U.S. Prisons
Human Rights Watch
October 2006
http://hrw.org/reports/2006/us1006
(PDF Document)

http://hrw.org/reports/2006/ us10...06webwcover.pdf

Republican senator says US prisons best in the world
June 05, 2005

Charges of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib notwithstanding, a top US Republican senator on Sunday took pride in the US prison system, calling it the best managed in the world.

"It's very difficult to run a perfect prison anywhere, but the United States does that better than any other country in the world," Senate Republican Majority Whip Mitch McConnell said during his appearance on CNN's "Late Edition" program.

The senator was responding to charges by Amnesty International that since the beginning of the war on terror, the United States has created a system reminiscent of Soviet 'gulag' labor camps.

The United States runs the world largest prison system that houses more than 2.1 million inmates, according to the latest government statistics. That means that one in every 138 residents of the country is now behind bars.

http://www.politicalgateway.com/...ad.html? id=3942

Comments (7) Comment (0)

September 29, 2007


No, I don't use or smoke dope, BUT
Law Enforcement Maintains Marijuana Focus Despite Rise in Violent Crime
Thursday, September 27, 2007

According to recently released statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), marijuana arrests reached an all-time high last year. This news comes despite a rise in violent crime for the second consecutive year. Yet, last year alone, 829,625 Americans were charged with marijuana offenses according to the recently released FBI Uniform Crime Statistics. Eighty-nine percent of those charges were merely for simple possession.

This begs the question: shouldn’t law enforcement focus on the rising violent crime rate instead of wasting precious resources and manpower going after people for marijuana?

Close to 100 million Americans—including more than half of those between the ages of 18 and 50—have tried marijuana at least once. Military and police recruiters often have no choice but to ignore past marijuana use by job seekers. In fact, the FBI recently announced it is changing its policy of not hiring people with a history of marijuana or other illegal drug use because the policy disqualifies so many people the agency cannot fill needed positions.

Marijuana prohibition is unique among American criminal laws. No other law is both enforced so widely and harshly and yet deemed unnecessary by such a substantial portion of the populace. Millions of Americans have never been arrested or convicted of any criminal offense except this. Enforcing marijuana laws costs an estimated $10-15 billion in direct costs alone.

Punishments range widely across the country, from modest fines to a few days in jail to many years in prison. Prosecutors often contend that no one goes to prison for simple possession—but tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people on probation and parole are locked up each year because their urine tested positive for marijuana or because they were picked up in possession of a joint. Alabama currently locks up people convicted three times of marijuana possession for 15 years to life. There are probably— no firm estimates exist—100,000 Americans behind bars tonight for one marijuana offense or another. And even for those who don’t lose their freedom, simply being arrested can be traumatic and costly. A parent’s marijuana use can be the basis for taking away her children and putting them in foster care. Foreign-born residents of the U.S. can be deported for a marijuana offense no matter how long they have lived in this country, no matter if their children are U.S. citizens, and no matter how long they have been legally employed. More than half the states revoke or suspend driver’s licenses of people arrested for marijuana possession even though they were not driving at the time of arrest.

With violent crime on the rise, arresting marijuana users at such alarming rates does nothing to make Americans feel safer.

Testimony by Bill Piper on a New Bottom Line for U.S. Drug Policy
As you know, it is impossible to talk about federal crime policy without talking about the war on drugs. More than half of all people incarcerated in federal prison are there for drug law violations; and through various law enforcement grant programs the federal government encourages the mass incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders at the local and state level as well. Police make more than 1.8 million drug arrests in the U.S. every year (nearly 700,000 for nothing more than marijuana possession). Those arrested are separated from their loved ones, branded criminals, denied jobs, and in many cases prohibited from accessing public assistance for life. The United States incarcerates more of its citizens for drug violations than all of Western Europe incarcerates for all crimes (and Western Europe has 100 million more people).

Yet, despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars and arresting millions of Americans, illegal drugs remain cheap, potent and widely available in every community; and the harms associated with them continue to mount. Meanwhile, the war on drugs is creating problems of its own - broken families, racial disparities, and the erosion of civil liberties. Congress’s 30 year social experiment in trying to solve a health problem through the criminal justice system is a clear failure. It’s time for a change.

And he goes on to say (and this is REAL, this happened to me although I had never dealt a drug in my life, had run a chemical dependency centre for five years and hadn't taken a drug or drink in ten years!! -- but there was a QUOTA to meet, so what the hell, why not frame me? I didn't have money to fight back. And thus I continue ot live in EXILE.)

Congress should also institutionalize a new bottom line in drug law enforcement. One that moves beyond grading agencies, taskforces, and individual officers on such Vietnam-like “body count” statistics as the number of people arrested and the amount of drugs seized. There is ample evidence that arrests and seizures have little if any impact on drug availability or the problems associated with substance abuse. And the pressure to meet arrest and seizure quotas is spurring civil rights abuses as some officers fabricate informants, raid homes on false evidence, lie to judges, and plant evidence. Anything to increase the “body count”. This pressure to boost the numbers is at the heart of drug war tragedies, including the Tulia, Texas scandal, the Dallas sheetrock scandal and the recent shooting death of Katheryn Johnston in Atlanta.



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