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TechnoratiZero-Tolerance Policies Wreak Havoc on Children’s Education
There are children who matter so little that no government agency even bothers to count or keep statistical track of them. They are the children of prisoners. Nationally, the justice systems have no interest in how children or families are affected by an offending parent's imprisonment. The state ensures that the sins of the father are visited upon the son.
The number-one predictor of a child going to prison is having had a parent in prison.
The number-one drag on a child's academic success is family chaos of any kind. And nothing is as chaotic as having a parent yanked out of their lives and branded as a convict.
Sen. Leo Blais, D-Coventry, has submitted Bill S0320 to the General Assembly, to reduce the penalty for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana to a fine of $100. Excellent. Hopefully this bill will pass. Hopefully it will start a trend of rethinking all of the state's morally-righteous but destructive laws that don't take families into account.
The 1990s surge of harsh zero-tolerance laws stuffed the U.S. prisons to the point where we lock up a higher percentage of our own people than any other country in the world. Some unlucky inmates got caught with an ounce or less of marijuana. In Rhode Island, 89 percent of the marijuana arrests are for possession. Is passing a joint among friends that much more pernicious than sharing a bottle of wine?
Well, some would say marijuana is the gateway to more serious drug use.
Sol Roderiquez, director of the Family Life Center in South Providence, would say, "Incarceration itself leads to worse drugs, often worse crimes. And with a prison record, it's so hard for an ex-offender to get a job, crime is one of the few options left." And so the cycle continues.
The Family Life Center helps ex-cons piece their shattered lives back together so they can live in the mainstream again.
According to the 2007 Pew prison report, Rhode Island spends $44,860 a year per inmate - the highest in the country. And that doesn't include the court costs.
But neighboring Massachusetts passed a law similar to Blais' that will save their taxpayers almost $30 million a year in arrests, bookings, and basic court costs alone. Eleven other states have also passed such laws. Vermont is considering one now.
Blais' bill is not legalization of marijuana, but decriminalization. The mom, dad, uncle, or sister caught with a joint won't have a criminal conviction on their record that makes supporting a family with legitimate work nigh impossible.
According to a survey done by RI Kids Count, as of Sept. 30, 2007, roughly two-thirds of the 3,081 inmate responders had children - 4,520 children, to be exact. When the parent goes to jail, many children go into foster or residential care, or stay with relatives who resent the unasked-for burden and cost. Families split up. Children act out. The stress is intense.
Roderiquez says, "When the state imposes such a severe punishment, it should take the whole family into account. Prison has huge consequences for the whole family. But we've dehumanized this population. They don't have feelings or respond emotionally. No one pays attention to the fact that we're pushing the families into falling apart."
Roderiquez and her colleague Nick Horton, policy researcher at the center, have seen it all, and rattled off story after story.
There was the family with three daughters. When the husband and breadwinner went to prison, the mother went on welfare. In time, the youngest child had to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, and the oldest became a classically enraged young adolescent, getting involved in serious escapist bad habits. All three girls' grades at school have tanked. Roderiquez and Horton add that children's grades always suffer. Always. "It's the first thing to go," said Roderiquez.
Then there was the single father responsible for two children. When he went to prison, one dropped out of school immediately, and the other ran away.
I'll gladly stipulate that smoking dope could be an indicator of growing or potentially dangerous social behavior. But wouldn't it be more effective in the long run, more healing for everyone, to send a family-services worker to the home to help those families who are in fact dangerously drug-involved? The City of Providence has a nationally recognized "go-team" of family-service workers whom the police call to crime scenes when children are present or a family is traumatized. Use them for marijuana busts. If you must punish the offender, revoke a bit of the family's privacy by investigating whether a family has unhealthy stresses driving the drug use. If we're serious about "corrections," the only real way to correct misbehavior is to get to the root cause, which prison does not.
When the best solution to a social problem is treatment, provide treatment. It's cheaper than courts and prisons, healthier, and more long-lasting. For my money, the state should look at all their laws with an eye to the collateral damage that harsh penalties cause to an offender's extended community. Is the damage worth it? Sometimes prison is necessary, but often it's just vindictive.
And for heaven's sake, start collecting data on the inmates' children. Bring those children to light. They are our responsibility.
20 Comments so far
Show AllI believe enjoying marijuana falls under my inherent rights (pursuit of happiness) as an individual, not subject to anyone else's opinion...it simply makes me feel good...as an American with no governmental representation of my position on this matter (or any other), I am subjected, if caught, to very real repercussions, such as loss of property, liberty, and possibly, life (if my arrest\tasering just happens to 'coincide' with my heart stopping a few minutes later, for example)...
it is wrong to imprison mairjuana imbibers...who's to stop the police from arresting them? or the attorneys from trying them? or the judges from putting them away? who stands, with common sense, for the average person when the machinery of one's own government rolls toward one with evil intent? do we need a new version of the police? the military? congress? a citizen version?
finally, this very real danger around something as innocent, and ultimately enjoyable, as marijuana use is very effective, as it squelches what would otherwise be very delightful and open, sharing interactions that might lead to widespread consideration of human direction...it also furthers this notion (religious?) that what is good (feeling good) is bad, and what is bad (arresting\kidnapping\incarcerating) is good...
Abusing addictive drugs is a public health and not a law enforcement or crime problem. If we invested the money used to harass and incarcerate druggies for rehabilitation and other therapies, we would be much further ahead on dealing with the problem addictive drugs pose to our society.
Poet
To the comment that we live in the most repressive society. Yes sir, the most effecient police state ever devised by man. We all part of the active penal system. 1. Freedom, is constatnt zero tolererance constraints. 2. imprisonment. 3. solitary confinement. It is all about the thinking. Don't think. Be Joe the plummer. Buy the bull**** and move on about your business. Very fustrating to watch. Scary to be a part of. The damage is serious, people are being hurt because of strange policies, continued by........who are they?
I can personally attest to the fact that marijuana use is NOT a gateway to more serious drug use.
It may, however, be the gateway to a serious case of the "munchies".
Not only is it not a gateway drug, but if cannibis was legal I'd never drink alcohol again. Yes, I use it for pleasure as well as for my glaucoma, and yes, probably more for pleasure than for medical reasons. So sue me.
We need common decency and compassion back in our dealings with each other. When did these values disappear. With Zero Tolerance?
Was flipping thru the tv dial today and stopped on a show where a young man was training to become a bounty hunter. At one point in the show he began to explain the reasons for choosing this line of work. He stated that his Mom got hooked up in drugs and was currently serving time in prison...and he wanted to work to put the kind of people that involved her in drugs, behind bars.
To me his story dripped with irony. I couldn't help but think, "Dude, it wasn't the dealers that put your mom behind bars it was prohibition". So now this kid is out there trying to put other people/parents behind bars when what they really need is medical treatment (although he didn't say she was an addict or what types of drugs she was involved in) or to simply be left alone.
I have a friend who is a retired bounty hunter; when he was working a death certificate was as good as an aprehension and return to jail. There's no telling how many crooks he wasted. He'll tell you it's one of the most satisfying jobs in America today!
If this is a true story, you'd best be very wary around your "friend" because he is a true sociopath who enjoys killing. Don't cross him. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?
Just the phrase, 'Zero Tolerance', gives me the creeps.
Unless you are willing to arrest people for drinking alcohol, for drinking too much coffee, for over eating, for smoking tobacco, for sleeping around, and for every other bad habit that people can have, there is no reason why anyone should be fined for possessing cannabis. It is just a plant, after all. Why not arrest people for eating green peppers? It makes just as much sense.
We are living in one of the most authoritarian societies on the planet. And for those who doubt me, then explain what you would call it when you have 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners. I would call it a national tragedy that we see everything as an excuse to enrigh the FOR PROFIT prison and probation system. I get ot deal with it myself, being on probatin in a state that has a medicinal cannabis law, but not for depression, even though it's been used for that for over 4700 years, first being used for it in the year 2737 BC. And what is worse is that we here in Colorado allow our politicians to make the decisions about what it can and can't be used for, and purely for political reasons.
The authoritarians never seem to understand that there are real consequences for making everyone a criminal. We are now, for instance, treated by cops and DAs like we are guilty until proven innocent, which we rarely are. I just LOVE hearing them say things like "if they aren't guilty of this, then they are clearly guilty of something else". And so they look high and low, and if they don't find anything, they will lie about it and falsely imprison people. It happens all the time.
We live in a Kafka novel of national scale, and it's time to close this book once and for all. No one should have to live this way, and for the powers in charge to glorify in how "free" we are is a national joke. It's just not very funny. In fact, it's a tragedy.
I'm not surprised that the children are suffering the most in all this. It is what happens when the "family values" crowd gets in charge. Everything is supposedly for the "protection of the children and the family", but what happens is that they destroy both. I have friends whose families have been destroyed by these people, and they just keep on doing it, regardless of how many families they destroy. It's like a real sickness for them, and they just revel in doing it. They are doing FAR more damage to the country than the people they are locking up. maybe it's time to take it right back to them and damage THEIR families and lives. And especially if we can do it using their own system to hurt them, then maybe they will understand. Until it becomes personal, they won't get it at all.
"5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners"
Can you provide a source for that statistic?
Zero Tolorance for Zero Tolorance!
Oh wait, don't allow your kid to have a cell phone either, else someone may 'sext' him or her, and they put them both in jail for a felony! We've become so insane about almost everything these days.
They shouldn't even be fined for smoking pot. No one should. They should legalize it, regulate it, and TAX it! There are so many other uses for hemp also. I mean, I don't smoke it and never have, but there's too much violent crime associated with drug prohibition, too many rich and powerful people getting richer and more powerful because of it, and too many poor people bearing the brunt of it, be it from street gangs or cops, drug lords or judges.
I saw comedian Lewis Black last night in concert, and he said the worst thing he ever did after smoking MJ was raid the fridge.
I don't smoke it either--anymore. The last I bought, twenty years ago, was expensive and poor in quality. If I had a medical condition that called for the really good stuff, I'd find a way to get it.
Black is the funniest guy around right now.
Cannibis is far more effective than either Xalathan or Lumigan in reducing the pressure in my eyes. Although PA does not yet have a medical marijuana law, I have my doctor's permission to use cannabis. He and I have proven its effectiveness, although without a full blown clinical trial many will regard this as nothing more than an anecdote.
ekaton
Julia, thank you for this thoughtful essay.
I say "right on"!!
We need to be thinking about how social problems connect, and begin formulating
solutions that are wholistic and not punitive.
Maybe we need a little more compassion.
Let's hope the trend to change heads- quickly- in this direction.
A person caught with marijuana, unless it's more than a pound, should never see the inside of a jail cell and face anything more harsh than a fine.
Agreed, except that anyone arrested with more than a pound of marijuana ought to be permitted to consume the excess on the spot to prove that it was all for "personal use".
You know, sort of like the old days when Pop caught Junior smoking a cigarette behind the corn crib and made the kid smoke every cigarette in the pack to teach Junior a lesson.
· Yr Obd't Servant