Pubdate: Mon, 18 May 2015
Source: Journal-Inquirer (Manchester, CT)
Copyright: 2015 Journal-Inquirer
Contact:  http://www.journalinquirer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/220

MALLOY DIDN'T CALL ANYONE RACIST BUT DRUG LAW ENFORCEMENT IS

Connecticut Republican state legislators are angry again at Gov. Dannel Malloy.

Last week the governor noted the racially disproportionate effect of 
the state's drug laws, which impose more severe penalties in the 
cities where most members of racial minorities live than in the 
suburbs and rural towns where most white people live.

The law, the governor said, "is patently unfair and, if not racist in 
intent, is racist in its outcome." The governor has proposed to 
repeal the law that makes mere drug possession in cities a more 
serious crime than drug possession elsewhere. He does not propose to 
change the law about selling drugs.

The governor's observation was quickly construed by Republican 
legislators as an accusation of racism against those who oppose 
changing the law. In protest the Republicans walked out of the House 
chamber, bringing business to a halt for hours.

House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, like the governor a Democrat, 
mildly criticized the governor's comment, though apparently only to 
assuage the Republicans and bring them back to work.

But the governor did not call anyone racist. To the contrary, he 
acknowledged the probability that the intent of supporters of the law 
was not racist. What is racist, the governor said, is the law's effect.

Many other people in Connecticut have made such observations for a 
long time. The governor is only the latest of many people who think 
the law should be changed as a matter of racial fairness.

Malloy, a former federal prosecutor, is not soft on crime. Rather he 
is trying to get state government to be smarter about crime. 
Imprisoning young men for drug offenses and then releasing them only 
to permanent stigma and unemployability, essentially ruining their 
lives, only sends them right back to crime. This doesn't protect 
anyone. To the contrary, it is a terrible threat to everyone.

Nor is Malloy the only one acknowledging that the "war on drugs" as 
it has been waged has not worked. Use of illegal drugs is as 
prevalent as ever, the United States has the highest per-capita rate 
of imprisonment in the world, and more lives are being ruined by drug 
criminalization than by drugs themselves.

The governor's legislation would repeal the law imposing extra 
penalties for drug possession within 1,500 feet of a school or 
day-care facility. Drug sales to children would remain criminalized 
separately. Indeed, the "drug-free zone" law the governor would 
repeal has done nothing to deter drug sales to minors. That law has 
never been more than a public-relations gimmick with which 
legislators have been able to pose as defenders of children.

Those who criticize the governor for daring to question the failure 
of the "war on drugs" should visit one of Connecticut's prisons. If 
the overwhelmingly darker complexions of most of the inhabitants 
there don't get the governor's critics wondering about racism in the 
criminal law, maybe they are racist.
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