Pubdate: Sun, 11 Mar 2007
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Manuela Thiess
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

GET SMART ON CRIME

Editor -- Thank you for your intelligent article on the abysmal 
failure on the war on drugs. It has always been amazing to me how the 
public could permit itself to be led down this path or, indeed, any 
of the brutal paths that Californians are willing to take to be ever 
tougher on crime, not just for drugs, but for all offenses.

Most people still go along with harsher punishments for lesser and 
lesser crimes because they blissfully assume these laws will never 
affect them, and they are taught, via the media and the all pervasive 
cop-and-robber shows, that there is a crook lurking under every bush 
waiting to drag them to harm and to the dissecting table in a crime 
lab as just another victim.

Little by little, however, I, as a school teacher encounter people 
whose sons and daughters have run afoul of the law, and they begin to 
see the monster that these draconian tough-on-crime laws have 
created, and they are beginning to ask themselves if this is what 
they wanted for their sons and daughters, their neighbors or themselves!

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1 in 20 Americans 
spends some time in his/her life incarcerated, compared to Europe's 1 
in 600. What's wrong with this picture? It is time to stop being 
tough on crime, and wake up to being smart on crime. The 
decriminalization of drugs is the best place to start.

Manuela Thiess

Monterey
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman