I really think criminals deserve these beds more than cannabis consumers

Following up on “The David Evans Inequality”, I wanted to puncture another talking point of the prohibitionist.  This is the claim that we really don’t lock up anybody for marijuana in prison – it’s as rare as finding a unicorn, as Drug Czar Walters once said.

This one I’ve christened “The George Skelton Diversion” in honor of the Los Angeles Times writer who recently penned this:

Our prisons aren’t exactly bulging with people who were sent there for growing or selling grass, let alone ingesting it. Fewer than 1% of the inmates have been sentenced for marijuana or hashish crimes of any sort, according to state prison data.

They total 1,325 out of 164,156. If you do the math — each prisoner costing nearly $50,000 a year — it isn’t chump change: around $66 million. But it’s hardly noticeable in a $10-billion prison budget.

So the reader is left to believe that we only spend $66 million enforcing marijuana prohibition.  Why, that’s a 0.6% drop in the prison spending bucket!

As usual, the prohibitionist ignores the true cost to society and the marijuana consumer – the arrest itself.

Every one of California’s pot arrests require police time.  Police labs have to test baggies of weed while rape kits sit on shelves.  California pays unemployment and other benefits to workers fired only for failing a pee test.  Cops have to follow up on grow tips and rip up gardens.  People have to replace doors and belongings after cops destroy them in a raid.  Court stenographers have to be paid to transcribe trials whether defendants are convicted or acquitted.  People lose upward mobility when a marijuana conviction impedes their job ladder or education plan.

Then there are the people in prison for weed who don’t show up in the “there for weed” statistics.  If you robbed a gas station two decades ago, served your time, and are on probation when you’re caught for a joint, you can go back to prison for your robbery and it doesn’t show up as a “busted for weed” imprisonment.  If you’ve had two convictions in California your joint can be your “third strike” that puts you away.  If you kept your different strains in different bags, you can go to prison for distribution, not possession.  There are conspiracy charges where you can be imprisoned even if no weed was found and you had no major role in the trafficking of cannabis.

Besides, no matter how few people are in prison and how little it may cost, is it right?  I say one man in a cage and a dollar to house him for the “crime” of growing and using a plant is still too much.

A Korean-American hip-hop artist who was born in South Korea but maintains a home in Atlanta, Georgia was sentenced by the Seoul Central District Court on Thursday for the charge of using marijuana while he was in the US. Crown J, whose real name is Kim Kye Hoon, currently spends most of his time in the US working on his music career

See the article here:
Korean Rapper Gets Prison Sentence for Smoking Marijuana in the US

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Hemp Headlines

1. Los Angeles dispensaries scrambling to find new real estate as new zoning ordinance regs kick in this weekend
2. Colorado’s Supreme Court refuses to hear case about what constitutes as “primary caregiver” of medical marijuana
3. Colorado man booted from Aurora mall for wearing t-shirt emblazoned with a marijuana lead

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com

• Groovin’ Thursday: Kottonmouth Kings – “Can Anybody Hear Me?”

Southern California Scene with Tere Joyce

• Thomas Kikuchi from the Landa Prison Outreach Program

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• Preview of Saturday’s Maine Medical Marijuana Conference

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Hemp Headlines

1. Violent criminals released from California prisons to make space while marijuana offenders remain behind bars
2. Canadian mother faces two-year custody battle over son in Oregon, her marijuana activism cited by child services as need for psychological and parenting tests
3. John Ray Wilson in New Jersey, multiple sclerosis patient, must remain behind bars while appealing his sentence for growing medical marijuana

Daily Toker Tunes

• Special Guest – Daddy X from Kottonmouth Kings with “Party Monsters” from “Long Live the Kings”, the new album dropping on 4/20

Southern California Scene with Tere Joyce

• Kushed Out Fashions

Grassroots Activism

• Brad Ernst from Texas NORML on the Texas Cannabis Crusade

$50 bail "is like a million dollars to me"

(NPR) [Leslie] Chew is like one of more than a half-million inmates sitting in America’s jails — not because they’re dangerous or a threat to society or because a judge thinks they will run. It’s not even because they are guilty; they haven’t been tried yet.

They are here because they can’t make bail — sometimes as little as $50. Some will wait behind bars for as long as a year before their cases make it to court. And it will cost taxpayers $9 billion this year to house them.

On this day that I met him, Chew’s bail is $3,500. He would need to leave that much as a cash deposit with the court to leave jail. Or he could pay a bail bondsman a $350 nonrefundable fee to do it for him. If he had either amount, he could stand up and walk out the door right now. But he doesn’t.

The money, says Chew, “is like a million dollars to me.”

Bail creates an incentive to keep making low-level marijuana arrests (©South Park Studios)

Please click over to the National Public Radio story entitled “Bail Burden Keeps U.S. Jails Stuffed With Inmates“.  NORML’s Executive Director Allen St. Pierre forwarded me this piece and it is a very compelling look at the perverse incentive created by the bail system that profits the incarceration industry at the expense of so many non-violent drug offenders. He continues, “NORML board member and Missouri criminal defense lawyer Dan Viets is always quick to remind cannabis consumers to, if at all possible, avoid seeking the service of bail bond companies in favor of hiring a lawyer to negotiate with the court for no bail, or a lower cost one (and without the conflict of interest and incentive to make money in the same manner as the bondsman).”

I always just figure if I’m in trouble and it’s going to cost me money, why not spend it on someone who is trained to defend your rights, someone who might even be able to get your charges dismissed, instead of dumping it on the guy with a neon sign a block away from the jail who you’ll never see again?

I know some people in the cannabis community take a dim view of lawyers.  A tiny few even think NORML secretly wants to keep marijuana illegal so its lawyers can make money on people busted for pot.*  I’m no lawyer; I’m just another toker like you who got really lucky in life.  And I can tell you, having met so many talented, intelligent men and women working as defense lawyers that every one of them vigorously defends cannabis consumers because they hate to see any citizen harassed by the state for enjoying their American hemp heritage.  They don’t need misdemeanor marijuana cases to make a living; they defend us because arresting us for marijuana is wrong, period.

Find your NORML Legal Committee attorney and keep the number in your wallet or purse.  If you get in trouble, don’t call the bail bondsman, call your attorney.  Let’s get you out of jail and keep you out of jail and hoepfully, keep your record clean.

(Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice) The 2008 figures show California’s crime index (key offenses reported to police) stands at its lowest level since 1963, including the lowest rates of homicide in 40 years. Among youth, 2008 arrest rates continue the trend of the last seven years, with felony rates at their lowest level since statistics were first kept in 1955 and record-low overall arrest rates around half the level of the 1950s. For every race and both sexes, youth crime rates are at their lowest trough since reliable records have been kept.

Of course, “fair is fair”: those who would own crime decreases should also own crime increases. California’s new 2007 and 2008 figures contain some truly bad news as well: the aging crime and drug abuse waves continue to crest. Here, we have a pretty good idea what went wrong. Conservatives in power fought the 1980s and 1990s middle-aged drug and crime surge by tossing tens, then hundreds of thousands in prison for longer periods—which, it turns out, actually worsens addiction (who could have known?). Liberals ignored the crisis altogether and still do. In 2007, a record 4,100 Californians died from overdoses of illicit drugs, triple the number in 1980. Now we have what no one thought possible: a burgeoning 40- and 50-age crime epidemic, whose felony totals rocketed from 22,000 in 1980 to 112,000 in 2008.

How has California law enforcement attacked this graying crime scourge driven by surging abuse of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, pills, and booze? By drastically boosting arrests for one particular offense… wait for it… misdemeanor marijuana possession. Note carefully: arrest rates for violent crimes, property offenses, felony drug sales, all other drugs, all felonies, all misdemeanors—that is, virtually everything else—declined (often sharply) over the last 15 years. But arrests of Californians for simple marijuana possession rocketed from 21,000 in 1990 to 61,000 in 2008—a population-adjusted rate leap of 127%.

Where did this lunatic strategy come from? Granted, there’s a massive aging drug crisis bellowing for attention, but it’s not pot. Meanwhile, crime clearance reports show that in 2008, law enforcement FAILED to solve 43% of all reported murders, 58% of reported rapes, and 57% of felony violent crimes—one of the worst years for policing on record.

The reefer mad, like the “Officer X” who was on the Rob Van Dam show when I guested, would say that it’s because of the marijuana arrests that crime rates are so low.  This is what I call “Magic Tiger Rock thinking”.  See, I’ve had this magic tiger rock ever since I was a kid, and since I’ve had it, no tigers have attacked me.

Policing is a zero sum game.  Officer time spent on a misdemeanor marijuana possession arrest is time not spent on patrol for real crime.  This is how prohibition endangers even those who don’t use cannabis.  Busting potheads is an easy day at work.  Tracking down murderers, rapists, and thugs is real work… and those people shoot back!

(Oregonian) SALEM — Faced with a $78 million hole in the state public safety budget, lawmakers are proposing to save money by delaying a voter-approved measure requiring longer sentences for property thieves. Also, they want to release prisoners early for good behavior and ease penalties for people caught with small amounts of drugs.

The bill also would make nonviolent criminals eligible for early release based on good behavior. Estimated savings: $8 million.

“I don’t like letting people out of jail,” said Rep. Jeff Barker, D-Aloha, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a veteran of 31 years in law enforcement.

“If it wasn’t for the budget crunch, we wouldn’t be having the debate,” he said. “But the cuts are so devastating that we have to save money.”

Barker estimates the state could save $95 million to be plowed back into prisons, courts and state police.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski sent a letter Monday praising the four Democrats who led the negotiations.

The deal will “generate enough savings to maintain critical public safety services like State Police 24/7 patrol, Oregon Youth Authority beds, court days and other services,” he wrote.

The state’s prisons budget has grown 20 percent each biennium since 1995.

Oregon already has marijuana decriminalization up to an ounce, but there are still those caught in the system with more than that amount and those who were growing marijuana.  Legalization of marijuana, as proposed by Oregon NORML in the Oregon Harm Reduction Act, would cut the costs associated with enforcing marijuana laws in the state ($61.5 million, as estimated by Jeffery Miron) or at least allow them to be redirected to the “State Police 24/7 patrol, Oregon Youth Authority beds, court days and other services.”  Then the money raised from the taxes and profits on consumer cannabis could also be “plowed back into prisons, courts and state police.”

How long will our states be able to afford the fruitless endeavor of trying to stop adults from smoking cannabis and leaving all that market’s riches to criminals?

The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.

The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry’s research department expects to continue for some time.

via nrc.nl – International – Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals.

Remember this the next time a prohibitionist tells you how terrible things became once the Dutch began tolerating sales and use of marijuana in coffee shops.  They’re closing prisons because they haven’t enough criminals; we’re home to the largest imprisoned population on the planet in history.

(Huffington Post) The Sing Sing show was a bonus. To say it was memorable would be a massive understatement. As would be understating the importance of reaching out to the people on the receiving end of the greatest failure of social policy in America’s domestic history.

You would have to be living on the moon to not know what a disaster the “War On Drugs” has been. Twenty billion dollars a year for the last 30 years, two million Americans in prison — 60% of them non-violent drug offenders — and you can go out on any American street corner and buy cheaper, higher quality heroin and cocaine than you could anywhere in America 30 years ago. The political expediency of “get tough on crime” along with the sure-fire vote getting “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality has successfully created the highly profitable Prison Industrial Complex.

On Saturday, I asked a corrections officer at Sing Sing what the prisoner population in New York State is right now. “Just over 50,000,” she replied. Then, it occurred to me: When I was imprisoned for drug offenses in the 1970s, the entire Federal Prison population totaled just over 50,000 inmates. Then the C.O. added that, when she started her career in corrections 20 years ago, there were 23 prisons in New York State. As I write this today, there are over 60!

Crime stats have stayed consistent over the last 30 years, but incarceration rates have more than quadrupled. It’s the human cost that has been the most damaging. I’m talking about non-violent drug offenders. Countless families broken up, the marriages destroyed, three generations of kids with fathers (and mothers) in and out of the system. These are mostly brown and black people. People from America’s cities who, as screenwriter David Simon describes them, “Leftover people. People who were necessary in an industrial America but who are of no use to the economy today.” Non-violent drug offenders who are locked up are people who are pawns in urban political gamesmanship. Nobody talks about them. There’s no political will to look at it. There’s no political capital in it. It’s a no-winner. But, there’s certainly money in prison building and guard hiring.

From Ed Rosenthal’s Blog

The Trial of Will Foster

In the late nineties, Will Foster was convicted of growing a 5×5 ft. marijuana garden in the basement of his Tulsa, Oklahoma home. I testified at the trial and upon landing again in Oakland and getting in a car to go home, a radio program was discussing the Tulsa race riots of 1921, in which the entire black population of the city was either murdered or escaped. It was by far the most blatant example of ethnic cleansing ever perpetrated in the United States. The thought of what happened in Tulsa sent a shiver up my spine. Shortly afterwards, I learned that Will Foster was sentenced to 93 years in prison.

After spending four and a half years in prison, pressure from media attention and public outrage led the Oklahoma Supreme Court to release Will and parole him for a 20 year probationary period on the basis that a 93 year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.

He was freed, and due to his degenerative arthritis, chose to move to California to escape persecution as a medical marijuana user. He was allowed to move to California as long as his probation was continued in California and he had a sponsor in the state, [me]. Will and his daughter Anna lived with me for almost a year. In that time he had established himself enough to get an apartment, find work, and renew his life. Three years went by and when it came time for California to renew his 12-year probation, the state decided that because California would never give a person more than three years probation for weed, they would not be extending the probation period. Oklahoma asked him to come back and he chose to remain in California, where he had established a life. He remained in communication with the Oklahoma authorities to try to work out a solution administratively that would keep him in California. Although the state of Oklahoma continued to issue warrants, they made no attempt of retrieving him.

Can you imagine going back to Oklahoma and its strict marijuana laws, being watched, being tested, all while having degenerative arthritis which only marijuana soothed? For years, Will tried to negotiate with the Oklahoma authorities, all to no avail.

In October of 2005, an alarm went off in a property that Will was renting. He went to see what was going on and when the police came, an ID check showed that he had a probation warrant in Oklahoma. He was arrested solely on the probation charge. After sitting in jail for almost six months, the Sonoma Country judge, Judge Daum, upon reviewing the facts, decided that Will was complying with state law and that because Oklahoma had not come to extradite him, the matter was out of his jurisdiction and Will’s case was dismissed. Will was released and renewed his life once more.

Imagine the disruption of being dragged away and placed in a state of suspended animation for months, everything is either lost or stored. All relationships are placed on hold and then, to be released back into life again after the state says “we didn’t really mean it, sorry”.

All was going fine until Will got into a really negative part of his relationship with a former lover who convinced local narcotics authorities and the DEA that they would find something big in a raid of his home. They didn’t, what they did find was a medical marijuana garden in compliance with local and state guidelines and small amounts of other controlled substances in his home that may or may not have belonged to him. Will was arrested and then the issues of the Oklahoma warrant came up again.

What would have been a trivial case has become a life-threatening exercise in injustice. Will has been in jail for a year, awaiting trial. If he loses the trial, which includes mostly marijuana charges, the Oklahoma warrant is sure to come into play, and if he wins it may.

There are technical questions as to whether this new warrant is still subject to the judge’s order, and whether Governor Schwarzenegger’s signature on the warrant overrides the judge’s discretion. A different judge than Daum will be deciding this case.

Beyond the health and well-being of Will, his case should be of great importance and concern not only to the medical marijuana community, but also any American taxpayer. Sonoma Country, California has been footing the bill for over a year to enforce not state or local laws in state hit exceptionally hard by the economic downfall, but the Draconian and extremist drug policies of the state of Oklahoma.

Along as being a friend and ally of the medical marijuana community, Will Foster is the poster child of how the criminal justice system is still locked in a mindset of hammering people with expensive and irrational jail sentences- regardless of personal circumstances- for the perpetration of a victimless crime.

This is where it stands folks, Will is in jail in Santa Rosa, CA and he needs your help.

There are several ways you can help him:
Courtroom dates and times will be posted at www.medicalmarijuanaofamerica.com. Donations to his legal defense are greatly appreciated. Make out checks to Chris Andrian, Atty. and mail to P.O. Box 196 Jenner, CA 95450

I’m just curious; can someone check on President Obama and tell us if he is still laughing? If he is, let’s give him a urine test and screen him for THC because this isn’t funny.