Housekeeping
In this post, I will be
discussing how the enforcement of drug laws may play more of a destructive role
in our communities and families than improving crime. I am using as a point of reference, a Biblical
passage from the 1st to the 20th Chapter of Exodus in
which Moses and his brother, Aaron, confront the Pharaoh of Egypt, who held the
Children of Israel in captivity as slaves.[1]
Additionally, I use these
Biblical passages as a point of reference not only because of my own Christian
upbringing, but also because of our nation’s supposed Christian values upon which
we rely on not only personally, but apparently, politically. And as much as we are quick to say that we
shouldn’t mix politics and religion, it is a message that is often overlooked,
if not ignored, very much.
The overall focal point will be
to contrast the warehousing of our sons and daughters who are otherwise
able-bodied and capable of producing taxes, raising their families, and
contributing to the overall community. This, in contrast to the subsequent none
-producing, and perhaps destructive individuals for whom our law enforcement
community have to defend against weapons of a trade that rarely take prisoners,
and leaves behind casualties that are all too often are becoming innocent
children. Is this post a quantum
leap? No! Not at all. And the sooner we come to grips with what
warehousing our sons and daughters is doing to our country, the sooner we can
turn around the ever-growing problem of loosing a generation to incarceration. My question here is, why do we, as a nation,
warehouse people? Call it the Criminal
Justice System if you will, but it is warehousing. Or even better yet, it is the abortion of the
living, all in a supposed effort to win the war on drugs.
What I hope to draw attention to
here is the point of looking at how, as a Christian nation, one that is against
the aborting of the unborn even in the case of rape or incest,[2]
is all about aborting the living by sentencing our sons and daughters for an
extensive amount of time at taxpayer dollars, and then, will complain of a
deficit in our nation’s economy. Why, to
a person with the limited intelligence that I possess, does this not make
sense?
Last, but not least, I will try
to challenge our nation, from my position of obscurity, to look into the future
on two fronts: Christianity and
economics. Can the two be in tandem, or
should they not be mixed either? The
Christianity part is in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ.[3] For Christians, this should be nothing
new. For according to the Bible, it is
said that He shall return like a thief in the night, to judge the quick and the
dead. And if that is so for Christians,
shouldn’t we be thinking about the souls of our sons and daughters committed to
the devil by mass incarceration? Shouldn’t
we also be thinking about our own souls where we have committed so many young
peoples’ lives to imprisonment more for the sake of the dollar rather than for
the sake of rehabilitation?
If not Christianity, what about
the true economics of locking up our sons and daughters for an extended period
of time in the name of, dare I say, JUSTICE?
Is it justice to lock someone up for a crime whose punishments creates
crime in itself? Is it justice to
warehouse citizens who, but for the laws of incarceration, focus more on
warehousing than rehabilitation? Or, is
it worth weighing out the economics of warehousing men and women, sons and
daughters, fathers and mothers when the overall benefit is taxpayer benefits to
corporate entities, who will stop at nothing to ensure locking up our sons and
daughters under the pretense of suppressing crime?
Will I arrive at my point in
this one post? I doubt it. If you have
read my posts before, I spoke of mass incarceration for profit in America
The earlier post could be
considered a prerequisite of this message, but then again, this is another
aspect of incarceration that needs to be looked at as well. The issue of literally locking up our sons
and daughters as though they have no value because of their decision to do
drugs seems extremely inhumane, for a reportedly civilized society. Profit, notwithstanding, will always be the
impetus for incarceration, without a doubt.
Crime in just about every other
area of the American Criminal Justice system is down, but arrests are up for
drugs. And as well, so are incarceration
rates. As a society, we have gotten away
from focusing on reducing crime, to creating crime through laws that imprison
our sons and daughters, extensively, for profit. But that’s okay, we are a Christian Nation.
What we as citizens and
Christians may ultimately be forced to do, is to look at the sustainability of
long term incarceration. We may, sooner
than later, come to our senses as either taxpayers or Christians, if not both,
and realize that the lives incarcerated for the unimaginable and unreasonable
amount of time sentenced, will eventually result in a higher rate of recidivism
(meaning new crimes) for far worse than drugs, and/or an increased burden on our
budgets (local, state and national) because we refuse to provide long treatment
for the drugs that our sons and daughters are exposed to. I further submit that we would much rather
allow drugs to be the impetus of laws that we use to breakup families, rather
than focus on reducing drugs’ infiltration into our communities. Therefore, we arrest, convict, incarcerate
and continue to allow our tax dollars to be used wantonly without so much as a
filter on the significance of dollars used on the poor.
Here are some short facts that we are aware of regarding
drugs and incarceration:
© From the website: http://famm.org/affected-families/drug-sentencing[5]:
(1986)[6]
Congress enacted mandatory minimum sentencing laws to catch drug “kingpins” and
deter drug sales and use. But the laws undermine the American tradition of
justice by preventing judges from fitting the punishment to the individual’s
role in the offense. Because of mandatory sentencing laws, the population of
federal prisons has soared and they are filled with low-level, nonviolent drug
law violators – not the “kingpins” mandatory sentences intended to apprehend.
© In an April, 2013 article by Matt Sledge of the
Huffington Post, entitled Mass
Incarceration by the Number http://famm.org/affected-families/drug-sentencing/rs,
he writes: “More than half of federal prisoners are incarcerated for
drug crimes in 2010, according to the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, and that number has only just dipped below 50 percent in
2011. Despite more relaxed attitudes among the public at large toward
non-violent offenses like marijuana use, the number of people in federal prison
for drug offenses spiked from 74,276 in 2000 to 97,472 in 2010, according to
the U.S. Department of Justice.” [7]
©
From the website drugwarfacts.org: (Penalties Imposed in Federal Cases with
Mandatory Minimum Sentences, FY2010) "The most frequently reported drug
mandatory minimum penalty in fiscal year 2010 was ten years. In fiscal year
2010, almost half of all drug offenders (48.7%, n=7,716) were convicted of an
offense carrying a ten-year mandatory minimum penalty. The second most
frequently reported drug mandatory minimum penalty was five years (42.4%,
n=6,711). Drug offenses involving a conviction of a statute carrying either a
mandatory penalty of 20 years (n=692) or one of life (n=153) accounted for a
small proportion (5.3%) of all drug offenses involving a conviction of a
statute carrying a mandatory minimum penalty."[8]
From the above facts, we know that
drugs are dealt with as perversely as any other crimes against persons, or even
property crimes. Why is that? Is it that the possession of drugs is equally
as volatile? Maybe now more than ever.
Drugs weren’t always this problematic. Or, is it the economic benefit to be derived
from locking up those who are least likely to be able to defend themselves
financially against our various limitless Criminal Justice Systems? Food for thought?
Drug War makes less sense than drug laws
In a piece written by By David Gerhold of the Iowa State Daily (david.gerhold@iowastatedaily.com),
he shares how two speakers, at the Memorial Union, defended legalizing drugs. This is a summary of what David pulled from
the speakers, a lawyer and a professor. They concluded:
©
Smoking marijuana
has medicinal benefits, but it also affects our cognitive abilities. That is, if we drive after smoking marijuana,
the outcome could be dangerous. ( paraphrasing- Martin Acerbo, Professor of
Psychology)[9]
©
“The war on drugs
has been going on for over 40 years, millions of dollars have been spent and
yet the situation is worse than ever,” Leininger said. “It is easier to get
drugs than ever before. And if the government can’t even keep drugs out of
prisons, how on earth can they keep it out of our society?" (quoting Brian
Leininger, criminal defense lawyer of Kansas
City , Kan.
In another report, written by
Khynna Kuprian, staff writer for the Bennington Banner, we find that prison
inmates are being transferred between states such as Vermont, Kentucky, Idaho,
California and Hawaii, to name a few, to
ease prison overcrowding. That
overcrowding seems to be made up of primarily inmates convicted of drug crimes. Kuprian quotes Holly Kirby of Grassroots Leadership, a 33-year old
national social justice organization,
who estimated in her report "Locked Up and Shipped Away" that
a combined total of $320 million would be spent this year (2013) by California,
Hawaii, Idaho and Vermont, to send their inmates between 450 and 3,000 miles
from home. [11]
Kuprian later quotes in her
article, Vermont State Rep.
Suzi Wizowaty (D-Burlington), who suggested as follows:
…(
increase) the use of alternatives to prison by utilizing and increasing
community-based programs including referral and treatment options. "We
need to end the war on drugs and realize it is a public health issue, like
alcoholism, not a crime," said Wizowaty, who would like to see an end to
the state's contract with CCA (Corrections Corporation of America
Rehabilitation?
It is hard to conclude that if
you lock up one person, or 1 million people for their failure to follow the
laws on drug use, possession, distribution and or sale for 10 years, that the
outcome will be that they will change their ways. It is further difficult to believe that 10
years behind bars, for example, is equal to the commission of the crime. How does one equate time and punishment with
rehabilitation? What is that formula? What component of the violation equates to
taking a man or woman from out of society, where drugs are flushed into even
the poorest communities, and then, imprison the alleged violators for violating
a law that punishes the low level users/distributors or possessors more than
those who brought the drugs into the communities?
And what about those drugs laws? How were they conceived? Or, how were they contrived? That a man, who is more often than not,
seeking a way to survive, sells drugs, in violation of the law, and then, with
no means of defending himself against a limitless judicial system, backed by taxpayer
dollars, becomes an incremental part of that system? The end result is
apparent, if not intentional. Rehabilitation
is certainly not in line with the overall intent if incarceration is the
optimal mission. There are economic
minds at work, and the more laws that can be contrived to imprison, even the
poorest among us, who are not committing murders, rapes, or other crimes at an
economically appreciable rate, but who are otherwise good for exploiting under
the guise of reducing crime via drugs. Is
this in keeping with the Christian values of America
What’s Christianity got to do with it?
Christianity in a country that
swears by God, and celebrates Christmas[13]
and Easter [14] would
seem to play an exceptional role in protecting our sons and daughters from a
life of drugs, if not prison. From a
Christian standpoint, seemingly, if we are true Christians, it would appear
that our sons and daughters, caught up by the drug trade would be best
protected if first, and foremost, their positions in the community as
taxpayers, aren’t sabotaged because they were caught up in the drug trade in
the first place. Such an impact can be
determined to be equally negligible to that of those who are caught up in the
alcoholic trade. (Note the emphasis on “trade” vis a vie- economic benefit). That’s not to say that people who do drugs
don’t have jobs, but if they do have jobs, they do not have to be cast out of
society because they were jailed for 2 or 3 weeks because of excessive bail, or
imprisoned for an extended period of time, costing them their overall value to
the community. How Christianly is that?
Christianity would suggest that
Christians shouldn’t be doing drugs in the first place. But Christianity would also suggest that
Christians shouldn’t be lying, cheating, committing adultery, swearing, stealing
and killing as well, but many of us seem to have a lock on those crimes
societal ills and, we still proudly call ourselves, Christians. Why the big deal here?
Many of us are watching our
communities get destroyed by drugs. That
is unmistakable, and somewhat, unforgivable.
But drugs, unlike many of the other vices we just named, has an economic
benefit that seemingly surpasses being a Christian. It would seem that drugs serve the purpose
of, however unintended, or however consequential, of providing an economic
outlet for the rich. And we know that
the rich are Christians as well. We know
the rich are greatly involved by the way our Christian views are often at the
table for anti-abortion, for which there is no wiggle room on abortion, even in
the event of incest or rape, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe
V. Wade.[15]
Basically, our values as
Christians have become blurred. We don’t
want the unborn to be murdered in their mother’s wombs, but we can turn a blind
eye to incarceration of able-bodied men and women for an economically-contrived
crime: drugs. There is no doubt that the drugs, whether
illegal, or taken recreationally, are bad for us. But so is alcohol and cigarettes. Those are regulated, and still, there is
something to be said for the effects of either on the body and the mind. But drugs have yet to rise, or fall, if you
will, to the level of these products where the laws can be re-visited, and
those incarcerated, or arrested, can be let go for treatment rather than
imprisoned.
Let My People Go 2014 B.H.R
As I indicated earlier, my
inspiration for this piece comes from Exodus, 1st-20th Chapter of the Bible. Moses, as it is recorded, was empowered by
God to call on the Pharaoh of Egypt to release the Children of Israel. We know the rest from there (Red Sea , 10 Commandments, Promised Land, yada,yada, yada). But there is no Moses here. God has not spoken to me. If He has, I have dismissed Him as I have done
the other voices inside my head. But
what I haven’t dismissed is the seriousness of locking people up, in this
so-called civilized society. Or, in this
so-called, Christian nation. A nation
that is, theoretically, under ‘One God!’; ‘Indivisible!’ ‘With Liberty America
Had I indicated 2014 A.D[17]
indicating after the death (of Christ),
there would be no reason to take this plea seriously. It is the calendar that we have used for over
2000 years. After 2000 years, Christ is
now smoke and mirrors to the masses, and it is plain to see that we have become
less than compassionate towards our fellowman.
It is plain to also see that as a country, we have become even less than
forthcoming about providing justice to one and all because Jesus hasn’t
returned in 2000 years. He probably in
another galaxy, having latte with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. To hell with justice or any semblance thereof.
The fact that it has been over 2000
years, we are virtually justified in being desensitized to the rights of
others, especially for the benefit of the dollar.
But, and that’s a big but, if we are a Christian nation, and we are about
redemption, then it would be in our best interest if we would open the prison
doors and release those from captivity, those who have been unjustly punished
for laws that have no more than satisfied an economic and corporate
hunger. If this is the country that
continues to speak of its Christian values, believing in Christ, Himself, then
this country believes that Christ will return, as suggested by the Bible. In that context, 2014 suggests that before
Christ returns, that laws are willing to be re-written, that men and women are
set free from the prisons that were initially intended for murderers, rapists,
child molesters, and robbers. Let go of those
whose basic crime was to be ideally included in corporate plans to infiltrate
poor neighborhoods, carve out an approach to arrest, convict and imprison
unjustly, indiscriminately and extensively those who are least able to defend
themselves against a Criminal Justice System motivated by profit, not reducing
crime.
Before He Returns, possibly in
2014, and I doubt if anyone has anything to disprove to the contrary, it would
not be beyond unreasonable for Police Departments, City Council members, state
and federal lawmakers, or the Justice Department to rethink incarcerating each
and every citizen on laws that too, need to be changed to reflect treatment,
not incarceration. Treatment, not
destruction of families; Treatment, not reducing able-bodied people to
revolving door criminals. Before He
Returns, whether in 2014 or beyond, it is imperative that we return to the true
value of Christianity that embraces our citizens, not make them pawns in an
economic attempt to satisfy corporate greed.
Can we do that beginning 2014, B.H.R.?
I believe that we can make that change, starting now.
[12] http://www.benningtonbanner.com/localnews/ci_24567489/new-study-vermont-ships-inmates-profit-private-prisons?source=rss_viewed
[17] A.D. or
Anno Domini Latin for, Year of our Lord
Christian Calendar- http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/ad.htm
