Those of you who listen to me know that I like to take other people's words and present them to you. The following is one sentence in a short article by Russell Baker, the humorist whose column sometimes appears in The Record Eagle. "The crusade against drugs has already filled prison cells with harmless people serving ridiculously long, mandatory sentences at immense expense to the public."
That single sentence says so much. One needs to unravel every section of that sentence. The very beginning says that America has embarked on a crusade against drugs. Most of us, when we hear the word crusade, think of a lot of well meaning people charging out and killing other people in the name of their God. If you interpret the word God in a very general way, that is what is happening: moral people, in the name of their God, are jailing, and killing people who ingest and distribute drugs--and notice the large, general word--drugs. What is a drug? And who defines good drugs, bad drugs?
And what has this crusade against drugs done? To continue with Russell Baker's sentence, it has filled prison cells. I assume that all of you know that perhaps as many as fifty per cent of the people in our jails are there because they are drug offenders--and I am talking of marijuana smokers and dealers, cocaine takers and dealers--and LSD, and heroine, and I can't possibly name all the drugs our government has decided to label as illegal. I know I may be exaggerating. The percentage of people in prison because of drug offenses may not be as high as 50%, but I am absolutely positive that several years ago, in New York State, the percentage was as high as 40%.
In some deep sense, even 10%, even one half of one per cent, would be too high since, as Russell Baker goes on to say, these people are harmless. They may do harm to themselves--they may take such horrific dosages that they commit suicide, but all of you listening to me this second are, in some way, committing suicide--by eating too much or too little, by working too hard, or exercising too little. You get the point. These people are harming themselves, but they are, as far as we are concerned, harmless people--and aren't we supposed to put people in prison because they may cause harm to, or have caused harm to, you and me?
To continue with Baker's wonderful sentence, these harmless people are being sentenced to ridiculously long mandatory sentences. In some states, a judge no longer has the right to decide how long a sentence should be. By law--mandatory--a judge must sentence the drug offender to two years in jail, or ten years, or life. In New York State, a great many of the inmates are serving mandatory two year long jail sentences for selling less than two dollars worth of cocaine.
You sold two dollars worth of cocaine. We sentence you to serve two years in a state prison. The cost to us taxpayers of keeping you in prison for two years? 100,000 dollars, or fifty thousand dollars a year. A British commentator thought it would be wiser if we just handed the person a 100,000 dollars with which to start a legitimate business.
We have come to the end of Baker's sentence wherein he says that all this is occurring at immense expense to the public. No one can begin to compute the expense to the public. The cost of keeping them in prison is in the Billions of dollars, but court costs, police costs, etc, etc, etc -- just add your own list of etceteras. Our behavior is idiotic, expensive, destructive. Russell Baker said much in one sentence, and yet America continues its crusade against drugs--no matter what the cost in money, or in destroyed human lives.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein