Pubdate: Wed, 02 May 2012
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2012 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Vincent Carroll

DRUG WAR MYTHS CUT BOTH WAYS

Those of us who believe the war on drugs has been a failure - even a 
fiasco - shouldn't have to invent or exaggerate reasons for idling it 
down. There is more than enough evidence for the debacle without 
clinging to myths.

Unfortunately, last week District Attorney Mitch Morrissey was 
labeled a "snake" and a "villain" by a fellow Denver Democrat, Sen. 
Pat Steadman, for merely pointing out that a central premise of those 
who would reduce penalties for possessing certain drugs in Colorado is false.

Morrissey insists our prisons are not bulging with felons who've done 
nothing more than indulge in personal drug use.

This common claim by sentencing reform advocates is, he insists, 
misleading in the extreme.

Morrissey appears to be right. Colorado prisons house more than 
20,000 inmates, and yet Denver - ground zero for the state's most 
destructive drug subculture - sent just 21 people to prison last year 
for the felony of possessing such drugs such as methamphetamine or 
ketamine. Significantly, not one was someone who screwed up just 
once, twice, or even three times.

Not one was simply a recreational drug user who happened to stumble 
into the arms of police - or, to cite the common stereotype, was 
ensconced in the privacy of his home when rousted from a drug-induced 
reverie by jackbooted cops.

Every single offender had a lengthy, sometimes staggering, history of 
run-ins with the law. Several were incarcerated for other crimes, too.

One fellow convicted for possessing meth had served a number of years 
for attempted murder. Several had prior sentences for assault or 
burglary. Some had served time in other states.

To be sure, a large percentage of their arrests - and in three cases, 
the arrests date back to the 1970s - probably were in some sense 
related to drugs. That was clearly true of the only woman on the 
list, whose drug or alcohol-related incidents span a dozen years.

But the flip side of that probability is the likelihood that some or 
many of them had been through drug treatment before, too, without 
discernible result.

The dustup between Morrissey and Steadman occurred over Senate Bill 
163, which originally sought to reduce a number of drug offenses from 
a felony to a misdemeanor. The bill has since been amended, under 
pressure from district attorneys, to authorize a study of sentencing 
guidelines for drug offenses. In other words, it's been gutted; hence 
Steadman's ire.

Republican Sen. Shawn Mitchell, a co-sponsor of SB 163, is correct 
when he says we should be counseling and treating drug addicts rather 
than throwing them in prison. But as a general rule, that's already 
what we do with all but the incorrigible who can't stay out of other 
trouble - as Mitchell mostly conceded recently when we spoke.

Where Mitchell most disagrees with Morrissey is on whether 
prosecutors need the hammer of a possible felony conviction to force 
repeat offenders into treatment - or to take treatment seriously. 
Mitchell counters that misdemeanor penalties - especially for repeat 
offenders - are hardly trivial, and that a felony record needlessly 
sabotages future prospects.

"This is not legalization or decriminalization," he emphasized. Nor 
would it affect drug dealing.

Mitchell speaks with the experience of a brother with a drug 
addiction - "what is our interest in putting him behind bars?" - and 
I share his conviction, as he said during a recent TV interview, that 
"we're not winning the war on drugs ... . We're making government 
more powerful and police departments well armed but we're not solving 
the drug problem."

Still, Colorado's prosecutors and drug courts already do appear to 
prefer treatment before incarceration in the vast majority of cases. 
So even if there's room for additional sentencing reform, we should 
at least acknowledge that it's not going to empty our prisons, and 
that prosecutors aren't snakes for merely pointing that out.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom