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"Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, César Gaviria of
Colombia, and Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, "all conservative politicians, blamed
the US emphasis on criminalization for the continuing toll caused by drug
trafficking, and called for an approach based on public health, including the
legalization of marijuana." - Associated Press
"Reserve costly prison beds for people we are
afraid of, not for people we're mad at." - Pat Nolan, member of California
State Assembly from 1974 to 1994, GOP leader from
1984 to 1988, two years in fed pen for
bribes
"Every
friend of freedom must be
as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the US into an armed camp, by
the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers
empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. Most of the
harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal." -
Milton
Friedman
"Spend on schools what we spend on incarceration,
perhaps we won't need so many prisons." - Joan Kramer
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only
power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals." –
Ayn Rand
"Cornell's (Cornell Corrections) Donald C. Wyatt
facility later became a case study at the Harvard Design School's Center for
Design Informatics.
This was an indication of the wave of business
and investment opportunities prisons and law
enforcement presented to everyone from architects to construction companies
to real estate and tax-exempt bond investors.
Harvard's case study
mentions that Cornell arranged for the facility to be constructed by Brown
& Root of Houston, a subsidiary of
Halliburton.
Brown & Root/KBR's construction of prison facilities was to become
more visible many years later after its construction of detention facilities at
Guantanamo Bay,
prisoner of war camps in Iraq and its winning
of contracts to build detention centers for the
Department of Homeland Security."
- Catherine Austin
Fitts
When
Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs" the
transnational elite understood that
incarcerating inmates at rates that ultimately rival the former
Soviet Union and repressive
Middle Eastern regimes is not only an excellent profit center but an effective
method of social control.
Prisons grew overcrowded and understaffed in
the conversion of public prison systems into new
private systems of
incarceration and forced labor.
This draconian 'war on drugs' is
not a war on 'drugs'.
This draconian 'war' is a war on people that
use drugs.
With PHRMA pushing drugs on television 24/7 in combination
with addiction recovery specialists we have an incarceration
pipeline.
"Prohibition of alcohol
fell flat on its face.
The prohibition of other drugs rests on an
equally wobbly foundation.
In declaring 'war on drugs', we have
declared war on our fellow citizens.
War requires enemies we can
demonize, fear and loathe.
Current policies expose the
embarrassingly meager
return on our massive law
enforcement effort of $167 billion a year.
It is time to accept
drug use as a right of adult Americans, treat drug abuse as a public health
problem and end the madness of an unwinnable war."- Norm Stamper, former chief
of the Seattle Police Department.
Cannabis was made illegal to
increase the fortunes of William Randolf Hearst, the
DuPont family and all the quack medicine producers of
Rockefeller Medicine.
Cannabis oil remains visible in the body for 30 days whereas coal ash
derivative water soluable chemicals wash out of the body in a few
hours.
"I had my deep secrets, and I assumed my male friends had theirs,
though none as shameful as mine - when I was 5,
I was forced into a sexual act
by a gang of kids who laughed at me.
I didn't reveal that secret
until I was 60 years old and in a 12-step program into which I'd stumbled
because of the booze and
drugs I'd used to Novocain the
pain of my shame and self
doubt." - Karl Fleming
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy, a Ronald
Reagan appointee, noted in a speech to the American Bar Association
that "our resources are misspent, our
punishments too severe,
our sentences too long" and urged the American Bar Association to study
"the inadequacies, and the injustices, in our prison and correctional systems".
The resulting study suggested that Congress repeal mandatory minimum
sentences suggesting that the laws tend "to be tough on the wrong
people".
" Longer mandatory sentences are worth so much to private
prison stocks.
A prisoner in jail for twenty years has a twenty-year
cash flow associated with his incarceration, as opposed to one with a shorter
sentence or one eligible for an early parole.
Passing laws regarding
mandatory sentencing or other rules that will increase the needs for prison
capacity can increase the value of private prison company stock without those
companies getting additional contracts or business.
The passage of - or
anticipation of - a laws that
will increase the demand for private prisons is a "stock play" in and of
itself." - Catherine Austin Fitts
"Looking to America as a role model for drug
control is like looking to apartheid
South Africa for how to deal with race.
America leads the world in
per-capita incarceration rates, with less than 5% of the world's population but
almost 25% of the world's prisoners.
About 500,000 people are in
American prisons and jails today for violating a drug law; that's almost 10
times the total in 1980.
Despite this dismal record, America has
succeeded in constructing a global drug prohibition regime modeled after its
own highly punitive and moralistic approach.
Rarely has one nation so
successfully promoted its own failed policies to the rest of the world." -
Ethan Nadelmann 02/08
1982
US spent $9 billion on incarceration.
1985 US
spends $36 billion on police, courts and incarceration.
1999 US spends $49 billion to incarcerate
individuals.
2002 England, Italy and Germany have
incarceration rates of around 100 per 100,000 of population whereas America has
in an incarceration rate of 436 per 100,000.
2004 2.1 million prisoners behind American bars which is
comparable to the rate of incarceration in the
Soviet Union under
Joseph Stalin and
Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
An individual convicted of petty theft in California - a
theft of less than $400 - who is sentenced to
serve any time in jail may be charged with a felony if caught stealing again
and punished with up to three years in state prison.
5,500 individuals
are serving third strike prison sentences in California including more than 100
serving a minimum of 25 years for petty theft.
2005 America spends $167 billion on incarceration.
Seven million Americans, about 3% of the total American population, is
incarcerated or on parole or probation.
California spends $573 million.
13,000 individuals, 9% of California prison population are three
strikers.
For a three striker, 25 years, the cost of incarceration is
$750,000.
Those sentenced to 25 years to life will effectively be wards
of the State for as long as they live.
In North Carolina Junior Allen,
65, is released after 35 years of incarceration for
stealing a
black and
white
television set worth
$140 in 1970.
2007 California imprisoned
residents at 4 times the rate it did in 1980.
"California's
correctional system is in a tailspin that threatens public safety and raises
the risk of fiscal disaster.
The failing correctional system is the
largest and most immediate crisis facing policy-makers.
Thousands of
local jail inmates are let out early every week as a result of overcrowding and
court-ordered population caps." - Little Hoover Commission, January 25,
2007
Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger
annonuces his new plan to borrow $7.4 billion to ease prison overcrowding by
building new prisons.
At this time 172,000 inmates are packed into
space intended for 100,000 inmates.
"'Tough
on Crime' sentencing laws have to be judged by outcomes and matched with
fiscal responsibility.
Despite the
rhetoric, thirty years
of 'tough on crime' politics has not made the state safer." - Michael E.
Alpert, chairman Little Hoover Commission, January 25, 2007
2008 1 out of 100 American adults is incarcerated - the
highest incarceration rate throughout recorded history.
"One in
every 31 adults, or 7.3 million Americans, is in prison, on parole or
probation, at a cost to the states of $47 billion.
The crime rate has
declined by about 25% in the past two decades.
Despite more spending on
prisons, recidivism rates remained largely unchanged.
One out of 89
women is behind bars or monitored, compared with one out of 18 men." - Pew
Center on the States
California has built 30 prisons since 1980
but inmate levels are double design capacity.
A federal judge finds
that a least one avoidable death is occuring per week through sheer neglect and
ineptitude even though spending on health care is up 263% from 2000 to $1.9
billion.
"Our prisons are crowded for one reason: Too many people
behind bars.
We could start by finding a more appropriate way to deal
with those prisoners who are more mentally ill than criminal, who were
re-incarcerated for technical parole violations that pose no public safety
threat, whose offense is mere drug
possession, or who are serving 25-year mandatory minimum sentences for
non-serious, nonviolent third strikes." - Sharon Dolovich, professor at UCLA
School of Law.
Judge Mark
A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan appear in federal court in Scranton,
Pa. to plead guilty to wire fraud and
income tax evasion for
taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately
run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western
PA Child Care.
Judge Michael T. Conahan secured contracts for the two
centers to house juvenile offenders while Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. carried
out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.
"There was a culture of
intimidation surrounding this judge (Mark A. Ciavarella Jr.) and no one was
willing to speak up about the sentences he was handing down." - Marsha
Levick
More than 500 sentenced juveniles had appeared before Mark A.
Ciavarella Jr. without legal representation.
Former Luzerne County Judge
Mark Ciavarella Jr. is sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for taking
bribes from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers in a case that
became known as "kids-for-cash."
2009 A federal
three-judge panel rules that the California prison system must reduce
overcrowding by as many as 55,000 inmates within three years to provide a
constitutional level of medical and mental health care.
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