Pubdate: Thu, 03 May 2001
Source: Hartford Advocate (CT)
Copyright: 2001 New Mass. Media, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/182
Author: Chris Harris

No Room at the Prison

America's so-called war on drugs has done little, if anything, to
solve the country's drug problems. Instead, critics say, the war has
created more problems, clogging our prisons with millions of
nonviolent drug offenders.

That was the message heard last week during a forum on drugs, racism,
and the correlation between the two. The event, held at the First
Church of Christ in Middletown, was sponsored by the Connecticut Green
Party, and Efficacy, a Connecticut-based nonprofit geared toward the
peaceful resolution of social injustices through raised public awareness.

The three-hour forum was a preview of sorts to Saturday's rally at
Bushnell Park, another Green Party- and Efficacy-organized proceeding.
The rally attracted hundreds of supporters who marched through
downtown Hartford, peacefully protesting the state Department of
Correction's plans for a 600-bed expansion of the MacDougall
Correctional Facility in Suffield.

There are 20 correctional facilities statewide, ranging from maximum
security prisons to youth offender halls. Of Connecticut's 3.3 million
residents, close to 18,000 are behind bars, some of them in
institutions here, and others in prisons in other states--a short-term
solution to the state's prison overcrowding situation.

There were more than 1.6 million drug arrests in this country last
year.

Nick Pastore, New Haven's former police chief and a research policy
fellow at the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, spoke at last week's
forum. Pastore, a 30-year veteran of law enforcement, said America is
"rapidly becoming two nations: one black, one white--separate and unequal."

As a man who's seen three generations of one family locked up in the
same prison for petty drug offenses, Pastore firmly advocates less
strict penalties for drug offenders. "The drug war keeps working
fine," says Pastore. "It just keeps killing people and doesn't get
drugs off the streets."

Cliff Thornton, cofounder of Efficacy, called attention to the 100,000
children in prison in this country, more than half locked up for
nonviolent drug offenses. Thornton says the law supports the
"criminalization of our children." From an early age, children,
especially African-American children, learn that they are suspects and
therefore act like suspects, he says.

"Gone are the days when a child would be brought home by the police to
be dealt with by his or her parents," Thornton says. "Nowadays,
they're taken downtown, booked, and thrown in jail with the rest of
the criminals. Our children are criminals and they know it all too
well. It's a perverse way to raise the first generation of this century."

Thornton summed up the evening by equating current drug policy to
"driving a car into a wall for 30 years. And every year we do it, we
expect something different's going to happen."
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