Prosecutors Seek Elimination of Mandatory Prison for Some Drug Offenders
Columbus Dispatch
Alan Johnson
3/24/2009
Ohio’s county prosecutors are hoping to roll back some of the “tough on crime” laws enacted in the 1980’s and ’90’s. Among their recommendations are a reduction of some non-drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and greater flexibility for judges in sentencing.
Ohio’s county prosecutors are recommending major changes to state drug laws, including the elimination of mandatory prison sentences for trafficking and possession of chemicals for the manufacture of drugs, except in the most serious cases.
The prosecutors also want to reduce several other non-drug crimes to misdemeanors from felonies, including assaulting a school teacher, administrator or school bus operator without physical harm; injuring a police dog or horse; illegal use of food stamps; and unauthorized use of a cable television or telecommunications device.
[...]
John E. Murphy, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorney’s Association, said the changes are intended to counter the Strickland administration’s proposal to ease prison overcrowding by allowing inmates to accumulate seven days of “earned credit” per month by participating in programming. The credit would allow them to reduce their sentences — even if they’re serving definite or “flat” sentences — so they can be released earlier.
Racial Inequities in Cuyahoga Justice System Will be Studied
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Leila Atassi
1/7/2008
Bill Mason has committed to announcing who will handle gathering hard data on racial inequalities in the prosecutor’s office by February. This is the first step in a negotiation with community leaders to address the significant and real problems found throughout the Cuyahoga criminal justice system.
Ryan Miday, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, would not comment on the selection process but said Mason hopes to make a decision by early February.
In late November, Cleveland City Council members, Mason and other players in the criminal justice system met for 3½ hours with local leaders in the black community to discuss racial inequalities observed in the system.
[...]
Stanley Miller, executive director of the NAACP, emphasized the urgency in addressing the problem and offered Mason his office’s help in finding a solution.
[...]
The study also will review referrals to diversion and treatment programs at the local and county levels, including data regarding the programs’ admissions and success rates by race, Mason said. And researchers will collect data on indictments, charges, pleas and sentences, as well as the rate at which each of the county’s 34 judges uses the alternative programs.
The group agreed to reconvene early this year and invite others – university professors, research centers, social workers, judges and attorneys – to participate in the discussion.
Disparities in Cuyahoga County are Focus of Meeting
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Leila Atassi
11/20/2008
Key figures in Cleveland’s and Cuyahoga’s criminal justice system met Wednesday to seek solutions to disturbingly large racial inequalities.
All at the table agreed it is a systemic problem with severe consequences for a community. And all agreed that finding a solution to racial disparities in Cuyahoga County’s criminal justice system is a bigger undertaking than any one of their offices could handle alone.
[...]
The discussion, which took place during a City Council Public Safety Committee meeting, focused on the statistical findings of a Plain Dealer analysis that drew upon hundreds of low-level felony drug cases from 2004 to 2007. The review found that white defendants were 55 percent more likely to get a misdemeanor than black defendants charged with the same crime. And white defendants were 35 percent more likely to receive treatment as an alternative to conviction.
[...]
Stanley Miller, executive director of the NAACP, said the entire system shares the blame for the disparity and likewise should share the responsibility for finding a solution.
“The justice system is broken, and everyone’s trying to point the finger at someone else,” Miller said.
“These types of issues have a very short shelf life. If we don’t address it today, it will pass away from our consciousness.”
[...]
Common Pleas Judge Timothy McGinty said he and other judges have petitioned the Supreme Court for years for a method by which to keep demographic records of criminal cases on the county docket.
[...]
“But we’re not collecting the critical data that could level the playing field – length of sentences, age, gender, color and socioeconomic aspects. Transparency creates accountability.”
Cleveland Eases Charges for Some Crack-Pipe Cases
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Mark Puente
11/10/2008
Frank Jackson takes a big step toward balancing Cleveland’s drug laws with those of surrounding communities. People found with drug paraphernalia with traces of crack or heroin will get addiction treatment rather than a felony.
The goal is to get addicts treatment without saddling them with a felony that could impair their ability to turn their lives around, Jackson said.
He warned that the new protocol will not provide a free pass to criminals, and police will still aggressively pursue drug arrests. The new policy gives them a chance to treat their addiction, Jackson said.
[...]
Presently, drug abusers face felony possession charges if caught with trace amounts of drugs in a crack pipe or heroin syringe. Community activists have said for years that similar cases from the suburbs are charged as misdemeanors, leading to inequity in how justice is delivered.
Cleveland is the only large city in Ohio that charges drug-paraphernalia cases as felonies, Jackson said. About 6,000 people face felony-drug charges every year in the city.
Jackson expects 1,200 to 1,500 of those cases to fall under the new policy. Robberies, thefts and burglaries should drop because people in treatment aren’t stealing to fuel their addictions, he said.
“This is about helping people and stopping the behavior that is destroying our neighborhoods,” Jackson added.
The city will adopt a progressive system, similar to a three-strike law and drunken-driving laws.
[...]
[Jackson] stressed that for years community activists have argued that low-level drug offenders — regardless of race — need treatment, not felony records.
Drug and alcohol addicts come from all races and communities, Jackson said. He stressed the new policy is not only directed at Clevelanders but also the suburban addicts who scour the city for dope.
Cuyahoga County Courts Show True Colors, False Justice
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Editorial
10/29/2008
Court systems need to act now on racial disparity.
So flagrant are the racial inequities in sentencing it seems as if our criminal judiciary slept through the civil rights movement.
White defendants were 35 percent more likely to receive treatment in lieu of conviction. Out-of-town and suburban whites were at least 77 percent more likely than black defendants to walk away with misdemeanor convictions.
[...]
The Ohio Supreme Court, meanwhile, must order judges to collect racial data pertaining to sentencing — a responsibility Ohio’s highest court has ducked since a 1995 state law directed it to do so.
Last year, Chief Justice Thomas Moyer agreed that the collection of race data was a worthy goal, “but I’m not sure how we achieve it.”
Start by demanding that judges in all 88 counties comply with state law.
That would be the first step to putting an end to this injustice.
Race and Justice to Get Action by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, Cuyahoga Prosecutor Bill Mason
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Regina Brett
10/24/2008
Jackson, Mason, and Cleveland City Council’s Public Safety Committee to take serious look at racial injustice in drug sentencing.
None of us can continue to remain blind to the racial disparities in the way felony drug cases are handled from our streets to our courtrooms.
No more claiming the discrepancies are merely anecdotal in nature. We have proof.
In Cuyahoga County, white people are more likely to have their felony drug charges reduced to misdemeanors – or to get treatment as an alternative to any conviction – than black people charged with the same crime. Black people are 12 times more likely to go to prison on drug charges than a white person.
The NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for a Safe and Fair Cleveland and the United Pastors in Mission want action.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson has met with the police chief and safety director. He is expected to announce a policy decision about the matter any day.
Councilman Kevin Conwell told me that his Public Safety Committee would hold a hearing about it on Nov. 19 at 9:30 a.m. in council’s committee Room 217.
Cleveland Council to Hold Hearing on Sentencing Disparities
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Gabriel Baird
10/23/2008
Cleveland City Council moving on race disparity.
City Council’s Public Safety Committee will hold a hearing Nov. 19 on disparities between sentences imposed on white and black criminals in Cuyahoga County Commons Pleas Court.
[...]
The newspaper found that white defendants tended to fare substantially better than their black counterparts — even when facing virtually identical charges.
The council session will be at 9:30 a.m. in council’s committee room at City Hall.
Reform and Consent
Cleveland Scene
Charu Gupta
10/22/2008
Ohio Supreme Court case filed by Bill Mason against a county judge trying to clean up the drug law racial disparity, may show that Mason has no intention of taking action.
In May 2003, a year after Mason’s meeting with the NAACP (see main story), Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Burt Griffin, a 30-year veteran of the bench, was getting ready to impanel a new grand jury. According to court documents (he declined to comment for this story), Griffin felt compelled to tackle the high volume of “crack pipe” felony indictments. He set aside the usual legal texts from which he read jury instructions, and wrote 10 pages of an original charge. Much of it was pro forma, but what Griffin said about crack pipe cases was unprecedented in Cuyahoga County.
[...]
Finally, Griffin explained in great detail the controversy involving crack-pipe cases. Defendants caught with these could be charged with either possessing a drug abuse instrument – a misdemeanor – or drug possession and trafficking, a fourth- or fifth-degree felony (assuming crack residue is found on the pipe). He then told the grand jury about “differential prosecution,” and how other jurisdictions in Ohio often treat such cases as misdemeanors.
[...]In court documents filed later, Griffin explained that he was “trying to lay the foundation for possible policy reform” – the very thing Mason had pledged to do with black leaders 12 months earlier. He continued: “An honest exploration and development of the facts surrounding the apparent differential prosecution of crack-pipe cases in Cuyahoga County might lead both to a reduction of the burdens of minor drug prosecutions,” Griffin wrote to the court, “and to greater confidence by members of the African-American community in our criminal justice system.”
Mason was outraged. He called Griffin’s assessment “a bald allegation with no support of any kind,” and accused the judge of a “stunning … disdain for the prosecutor’s office,” according to affidavits and motions filed immediately against Griffin. The judge should be disqualified, Mason told the court, for harboring prejudice against prosecutors and for incorrectly instructing the jury to use a different burden of proof for crack-pipe cases. Such a statement, Mason wrote, “is an act to prevent the prosecution of felonies under Ohio law.”
[...]
The matter was finally settled in Griffin’s favor when the court found no grounds for bias or prejudice. Griffin retired in 2005. Similar instructions have never again been issued by any judge.
Earlier this year, an ACLU study concluded that the racial disparity in Cleveland’s treatment of crack-pipe cases versus those in the suburbs was, in fact, real – far from a “bald allegation with no support of any kind.”
Bill Mason’s Mean Machine
Cleveland Scene
Charu Gupta and James Renner
10/22/2008
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, Bill Mason, has had years to address the racial disparity in drug laws. Meaningful action is overdue.
Mona Lynch is a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine. Earlier this year, she studied aspects of Cuyahoga County’s criminal-justice system as part of the ACLU’s national project on racial disparities in drug arrests. At Scene’s request, Lynch also read the
2005 report. She found Mason and JSR’s inattention to open discovery surprising.“It would have been very low cost to implement,” says Lynch, “and perhaps provided some cost savings as well. There are important justice and efficiency reasons to have open discovery.”
In September, a new committee headed by Judge Friedman proposed another course: Within one week of the first pretrial conference, prosecutors would give defense counsel a “discovery packet” containing all police reports, statements and criminal records of defendants, witnesses names and addresses, and any lab and hospital reports. Prosecutors could decide to redact any information in any of these documents they deemed sensitive. Defense attorneys could still ask a judge to unmask it, after showing “good cause.”
That’s still not enough prosecutorial advantage for Mason.
A few weeks ago, Mason told Plain Dealer columnist Regina Brett – who’s been flogging the prosecutor over open discovery – that he’s “not against open discovery” and is working with the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association on a statewide proposition.
[...]
In 2000, Human Rights Watch documented just how disproportionately the so-called war on drugs targets African Americans. At that time in Ohio, blacks made up 11 percent of the general population but 70 percent of the prison population. Most were locked up on drug-related charges.
In early 2002, the Rev. Marvin McMickle got to see why. The pastor of Antioch Baptist Church and civil-rights activist spent four months serving as foreman of a Cuyahoga County grand jury, the body that issues felony indictments. He left a troubled man. A majority of the defendants accused of low-level drug felonies were black Clevelanders – and most were addicts, not dealers.
[...]
“If you get a [fifth-degree] felony at age 20,” McMickle told Scene this July, “then 20 years later you’re still a felon and maybe you’re having a hard time taking care of your family, right? That just perpetuates this cycle.” McMickle and the pastors wanted to know: Would Mason tackle the random police sweeps and subsequent charging decisions that were putting so many black Clevelanders on the path of felony convictions?
According to a 2002 Plain Dealer article, Mason promised back then to look for ways to reduce the number of minor drug-possession arrests (dubbed “crack-pipe cases”) being charged as felonies. He would go into the community and meet with police officers and municipal judges who were sending these cases to his office and try to find a systematic solution to the pastors’ and NAACP’s concerns.
[...]
The number of Cleveland’s felony drug-possession arrests has remained steady – 5,500 a year since 2003, nearly 70 percent of the county’s total – according to statistics compiled by local and federal agencies.
[...]
Former county judge Peggy Foley Jones, who served until 2005, says Mason’s office seldom reduces charges before trial. “That’s what’s clogging up the system,” she says. “You try a crack pipe case for two days.” While many such cases are settled during trial, the snowball of court time and costs has already been set in motion.
[...]
For the last several years, annual grand jury costs for jurors, court personnel and prosecutors have totaled nearly $1.5 million.
[...]
Citizens for a Safe and Fair Cleveland was formed in early 2007 to focus on the impact of law enforcement, judicial equity and community relations.
James Hardiman, CSFC’S co-chairman and first vice president of the Cleveland NAACP, has called low-level drug arrests charged as felonies “a crisis in our community.”Earlier this year, CSFC partnered with the ACLU, which was already looking at racial disparities in sentencing and drug arrests nationwide. The ACLU has focused on Cuyahoga County, with research conducted by Mona Lynch, the criminology professor from UC, Irvine. Lynch’s conclusions were released in July and titled, “Selective Enforcement of Drug Laws in Cuyahoga County.”
Lynch scrutinized grand jury reports and demographic data to document what many had long suspected: There is a racial – or at least a geographic – disparity in how the county prosecutes drug cases. Cleveland drug suspects are more likely to be charged with felonies in county courts, while suburban counterparts usually face only misdemeanors in municipal courts.[...]
Peggy Foley Jones, a Republican, served on the bench for 14 years until losing to Peter Corrigan, a candidate backed by Mason in the 2004 election.
(Of the five separate bar associations that make up the Judicial Candidates Rating Coalition, three ranked Jones as “excellent” and two reviewed her as “good” in 2004. All five rated Corrigan “good.”) Jones says that many sitting judges find at least an appearance of impropriety in Mason’s political behavior. “Mason is in a powerful position in the county Democratic party,” she says. “He [influences] who gets endorsements, who gets to run. So that affects judges’ thoughts, even if it’s just a perception.”[...]
“Mason is at the heart of county Democratic politics,” says Chris Link, the executive director of Cleveland’s ACLU. “That isn’t a good thing because you then don’t really have an independent prosecutor. It’s very difficult to be critical of people in your own party.”
[...]
After news reports revealed his refusal to debate his opponent at the City Club – he hadn’t even responded – Mason finally agreed, and he and Annette Butler met there on Monday.
[...]
She brought up recent media coverage of racial disparity in crack-pipe cases, and two questions from the audience dealt with the issue. Oddly, Mason’s response seemed to suggest that the problem was news to him. “I find it disconcerting to all of us involved in the justice system. I will say
this: I will go out and I will ask for funding to look at this issue very strongly, to have it analyzed.”He neglected to mention the studies that have already confirmed the disparity or the fact that local community leaders brought it to his attention six years ago.
Cuyahoga County Needs to End Double Standard in Drug Cases
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Regina Brett
10/21/2008
Change is needed at the Justice Center.
Why do so many black people end up there with felony charges?
Two newspapers have answered that question in a way that should shame us into action.
[...]
In Cuyahoga County, black people … are 12 times more likely to be sent to prison on drug charges than a white person.
The Call & Post, Ohio’s black newspaper, ran a story last week about a new report released by Citizens for a Safe and Fair Cleveland. “Selective Enforcement of Drug Laws in Cuyahoga County, Ohio” shows that whites and blacks use drugs at similar rates but blacks are more likely to be convicted of felony charges.
[...]
“It can no longer be denied,” Rev. Marvin McMickle told me. “There is a double standard.”
On Monday, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason said he would look for solutions. McMickle would like one of them to be more black prosecutors.
[...]
It’s time for a clear-cut plan of action that includes the mayor, the police chief, the law director, the prosecutor, the judges and the lowliest beat cops on the street. It’s time they all operate with both eyes open.
The Drug War Sends White People Into Treatment, While Black People Get Felonies
StoptheDrugWar.org
Chronicle Blog
Scott Morgan
10/21/2008
National drug policy blog picks up what’s happening in Cleveland.
This Cleveland Plain-Dealer story just completely blows the lid off the inherent racism of the war on drugs. Reporter Bob Paynter pulled out all the stops, digging through court records to demonstrate how people of color receive harsher punishments than white defendants for the same drug crimes.
Prosecutor Bill Mason to Address Issue of Drug Case Disparities
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Leila Atassi
10/21/2008
During a debate at the City Club of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, Bill Mason, states that he is now willing to look for solutions to racial disparity in his office.
Former federal prosecutor Annette Butler, who hopes to unseat Mason in November, challenged the prosecutor using stories that ran Sunday and Monday in The Plain Dealer, analyzing the outcomes of hundreds of criminal cases since 2004. The investigation found that black defendants were more likely to be convicted of felonies than their white counterparts who committed similar crimes.
[...]
[Mason] highlighted a report produced in 2004 by the Denver-based Justice Management Institute, which extensively studied the county court system and provided 36 recommendations to improve its efficiency. The Justice Management Institute recently returned to evaluate the county’s improvement and rated it a B+.
Mason and the justice system reform council, however, have not done enough, Butler said. Mason has ignored the institute’s suggestions to adopt open discovery, she added. The practice would require prosecutors and defense attorneys to share evidence with one another.
Review Finds White Drug Defendants 55% More Likely to Have Charges Reduced
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Bob Paynter
10/20/2008
Prosecutor Bill Mason and his staff are a large part of the racial disparity in drug sentencing, according to research.
Why did Kevin McFaul, white and the son of the county sheriff, get off with a misdemeanor conviction last year in his cocaine-possession case — potentially preserving his law license — while Mercia Cherry, a black resident of Cleveland’s East Side, had to take a felony in hers?
[...]
The newspaper reported Sunday that among first-time offenders who pleaded guilty last year to a single felony drug-possession charge, white defendants were 35 percent more likely than black people to get a second chance to make their pleas and charges disappear by successfully completing a treatment plan.
Court records show that virtually all of that racial disparity occurred in something called the Early Intervention Program, the control of which remains somewhat mysterious.
Judges and defense attorneys said in interviews that the program has come to be controlled by Prosecutor Bill Mason’s office over the years, an assertion prosecutors dismiss.
[...]
Among all defendants indicted in Cuyahoga County on a single, low-level drug-possession charge over the last four years who were convicted after pleading guilty, white people were 55 percent more likely than black people to have their charges reduced to a misdemeanor.
[...][Public defender Robert Tobik] has been arguing for years that more entry-level drug offenders should be allowed misdemeanor pleas, especially in crack-pipe “residue” cases like Cherry’s, which typically involve mere chemical traces of cocaine.
These residue cases clog the system and waste the court’s resources, Tobik said; several judges have made similar arguments. But to no avail:
Misdemeanors have actually become harder — not easier — to come by in Common Pleas Court.[...]
On the matter of misdemeanor pleas, prosecutor protests notwithstanding, it appears from the data to help if you live in the suburbs or outside the area.
It helps even more if you’re from out of town and white.
Justice Blinded: Race, Drugs and Our Legal System
Cleveland Plain Dealer
10/18/2008
Another study following the Lynch report, shows serious inequalities in the way drug laws are executed in Cuyahoga County.
Anthony Smith Jr. and Dontez Orr are young, black and poor. Both are residents of inner-city Cleveland. And both earned felony records for drug possession last year after seemingly minor run-ins with police.
Brian Biddulph of Westlake had more drugs than Smith and Orr combined when he was arrested last summer, and had a worse criminal record. But Biddulph, who is white, was allowed to enter an intervention program. His case — and the stain of a possible felony conviction — will disappear if he completes it.
A Plain Dealer investigation into the handling of low-level drug cases in Cuyahoga County shows that white defendants tended to fare substantially better than their black counterparts — even when facing virtually identical charges.
The issue raises important questions about the fairness of the justice system. National data have long shown that white people use illegal drugs at about the same rate as black people but that blacks are arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned far more often for doing so.
Drug Court Helped Graduate Maintain Sobriety, Regain Custody of Children
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Rachel Dissell
October 9th, 2008
Cuyahoga County’s Family Drug Court helps mothers beat addiction.
The support that helped her get sober after 20 years and losing six children to her addiction is something she never found before coming to Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court’s Family Drug Court.
Beyond rebuilding the ravaged self-esteem of many women — and a few men — who have had their children taken away, the program has reunified families faster than through traditional court and child-welfare methods, according to studies of the program.
This Is A Fairness-free Zone
Scene Magazine
James Hardiman – Letter to the Editor
August 07, 2008
James Hardiman, chair of Citizens for a Safe and Fair Cleveland wrote this letter to the editor in response to the July 30 article titled Disparate Times.
Research shows that individuals use drugs at roughly the same rate across all racial lines. Despite this, African Americans and those who live in the city of Cleveland are far more likely to be charged and convicted of a felony drug crime than those who are white and those who live in the suburbs (“Disparate Times,” July 30, 2008).
According to a May 2008 nationwide report by Human Rights Watch, more whites than blacks over the age of 12 report using drugs at least once in their lifetime (49 percent, 42.9 percent, respectively). Among those considered current drug users who have used illicit drugs in the past month, 8.5 percent of whites and 9.8 percent of blacks identify in this category. Yet, 81 percent of drug cases in Cuyahoga County are levied against African Americans.
The consequences of this are dire for our community. Thousands of African Americans are unable to get well-paying jobs to support their families because they have a felony drug conviction. In addition, countless more people that need rehabilitation are merely shipped off to prison and often return to drug use after their release.
Citizens for a Safe & Fair Cleveland believes there is a better way to make our streets safer and our communities stronger. The justice system must begin by treating all people equally and not reserving harsher penalties for those who live in the city of Cleveland or African Americans. All people who violate the law should be held accountable, but the punishment should be equal to the crime. Charging a person with a felony for merely holding paraphernalia is unfair.
Additionally, officials must find new ways to address the drug problem besides incarcerating people with no counseling or rehabilitation. Prison does not cure someone of a drug addiction, and without meaningful intervention, it is likely they may continue their drug use. The current system is crippling our communities and not making us any safer. It is time for local officials to try new techniques to ensure all people are treated fairly or we risk continued harm to our neighborhoods and unequal treatment in our courts.
James Hardiman
Chair, Citizens for a Safe & Fair Cleveland
Drug Law Enforcement in Cleveland Too-Black and White
Takepart Blog
Gina Teleroli
August 04, 2008
Gina Teleroli writes about the Lynch Report in Takepart Blog.
A horrifying result of the report lies in the fact below:
In 2005, 81 percent of all county drug arrests involved black people, despite the fact that only 27 percent of country residents are African-American. [ACLU]
Also revealed in the report is the significant fact that judges in non-white areas of Cuyahoga County are more likely to charge low-level drug law violations as felonies, whereas the judges in the white areas give the same offense the charge of a misdemeanor.
Report Details Racially-Biased Enforcement of Drug Laws in Cuyahoga County, Ohio
ACLU Blog Of Rights
Jag Davies, ACLU Drug Law Reform Project
August 01, 2008
This ACLU Blog Of Rights posting refers to Citizens for a Safe and Fair Cleveland and Dr. Mona Lynch’s report, “Selective Enforcement of Drug Laws in Cuyahoga County, Ohio: A Report on the Racial Effects of Geographic Disparities in Arrest Patterns.”
Disparate Times
Scene Magazine
Dan Harkins
July 30, 2008
This article describes the disparities in drug prosecutions in Cuyahoga County, and refers to Citizens for a Safe and Fair Cleveland, as well as Dr. Mona Lynch’s report on selective drug law enforcement in the county.
Back in September 2001, as the nation recoiled from mighty blows at the hands of foreigners, the Rev. Marvin McMickle was settling into his new role as foreperson of a county grand jury, the engine of indictment for serious crimes committed by our neighbors. What he discovered still haunts him to this day – a “21st-century scarlet letter” he’d suspected but didn’t want to believe still existed for many of those who share the color of his skin.
Watching a handful of grand juries operating at once, two days a week, each hearing about 60 cases a day, McMickle soon perceived a disparity: Around half the cases were against low-level drug offenders, almost all of whom were black. At a tour of the county jail at the beginning of his term, McMickle “had to work hard to find a white face” on the other side of the bars.
In his report at the end of his four-month term, the longtime pastor of historic Antioch Baptist Church on Cedar Road was the first civic leader in years to indict the system and its crapshoot of consequences.
“The grand jury process had an apartheid feel to it,” he wrote to Common Pleas Judge Richard McMonagle in February 2002, with an “established pattern of quick indictment of persons on petty drug offenses. I am not condoning drug use, drug possession or drug trafficking. What I am concerned about are the random stops by police for alleged questioning on a traffic violation, a pat down or search of the car that results in the discovery of some infinitesimal amount of drugs, and a quick arrest. The arrest often results in confiscation of property, and, more importantly, the creation of a felony criminal record and the implications that has for voting rights and job opportunities down the road.”
Drug Addiction an Illness, Not a Crime
Albany Times Union
Anthony Papa
July 08, 2008
The writer refers to Tatum O’Neal’s recent arrest for drug possession and argues that treatment is more effective than imprisonment for those with a drug addiction.
Tatum O’Neal, the Oscar-winning actress, took a plea deal last week stemming from her June 1 arrest while supposedly trying to score some crack cocaine on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She was initially charged with possession of a controlled substance and faced a year in prison if convicted. The court allowed her to plead out to a disorderly conduct charge and ordered her to attend two half-day drug treatment sessions. If she follows the court’s orders, the cocaine possession charges will be dismissed.
O’Neal has been open about her history of heroin addiction as outlined in her memoir, “A Paper Life.” When she was arrested by undercover officers, they searched her and found two bags of cocaine along with an unused crack pipe. She had initially told police she was doing research for an acting role. Then she changed her story and told them that the death of her 16-year-old dog nearly triggered her into relapse.
Some say O’Neal was treated with a slap on the wrist. Others say she did not deserve to do any jail time because of her addiction. This raises a critical question that we as a society need to address. Should we treat drug addiction as a criminal matter, or as a medical problem?
Cuyahoga County to Start Drug Court
Cleveland Plain Dealer Blog
Tom Benning
June 13, 2008
Judges in Cuyahoga County have voted to establish a countywide drug court.
Cuyahoga County judges didn’t let the chance to start a drug court slip through their grasp a second time.
Common Pleas Court judges unanimously voted in favor of a countywide drug court this week — 11 years after voting against such a measure. Court officials hope the treatment program will be up and running within a year.
“We are not going to be soft on crime,” Court Administrator and former Common Pleas judge Tom Pokorny said. “We are going to be smart on crime.”
Drug court is a yearlong treatment program for non-violent drug offenders. Participants must submit to random drug tests, counseling and job training. If they graduate, charges are dismissed. If they fail, they serve out their sentence.
Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’
New York Times
Adam Liptak
4/23/2008
This article comparing the prison population in the US with that of other countries is part of a series of articles in the New York Times titled American Exception: Millions Behind Bars.
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.
The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.
China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)
Petty felons get prison too often
Columbus Dispatch
Letter to the Editor
3/29/2008
Columbus attorney Harry R. Reinhart wrote this letter to the editor in response to an article and letter on prison populations in the Columbus Dispatch.
After reading Nancy Elliott’s Feb. 22 letter suggesting that I had complained about prison populations being swollen due to maximum sentences for dangerous criminals, I was forced to go back to the original Dispatch article (“Life terms pile up for rapists,” Feb. 11) to see if I said such a thing. After all, prison bed space is indeed designed for taking the dangerous criminal off the street for long periods of time. Why on earth would I make such a comment? Now, having refreshed my recollection, 1 realize that I did not “conveniently forget” that “cruel, merciless and unrepentant” criminals should be incarcerated, as suggested by Elliott.
Although the entire interview was not published, what I said and what reasonable readers would understand from the part quoted was that the General Assembly has passed laws that put far too many petty felons in prison — people who, to paraphrase Elliott, are not cruel, who do have mercy and who are repentant — thus limiting the beds available for the deserving. If Elliott would take the time to look beyond her vicarious pain and into the current demographic of the Ohio prison population, she would discover that the majority — indeed, the substantial majority — of prisoners are minor and petty offenders. Low-level drug offenders or folks sentenced for petty property offenses doing minimum or near-minimum sentences have swollen the prison population. These prisoners constitute the majority of the prison population. They should not.
Drug sweep at John Marshall High School is first of many for Cleveland schools
Cleveland Plain Dealer
3/25/2008
Raising fears among parents and students, Cleveland schools announced a lockdown drill and searched for drugs.
Police and security officers have begun making random sweeps of Cleveland schools in search of drugs.
The first sweep came Thursday at John Marshall High School. School security officers, city police and two drug-sniffing dogs went through lockers for two hours while students were kept in their classrooms.
No drugs were found, but schools security chief Lester Fultz said he is more interested in making a point than making arrests.
“The goal is to send a very strong message in terms of what is not allowed in the buildings,” he said. “We were not disappointed that we didn’t find anything.”
Cuyahoga County inmates could be freed if not indicted within 30 days
Cleveland Plain Dealer
3/24/2008
Police departments and prosecutors in Cuyahoga County must complete their investigations in a more timely fashion, according to a new rule.
A new rule adopted by judges in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court will release any county inmate bound over to a grand jury but not indicted within 30 days.
That means that absent some fundamental change in the way police and prosecutors do business, dozens of inmates on any given day could be turned loose as a result of the criminal justice system’s inefficiency.
The rule, which takes effect April 14, is modeled after one used in Montgomery County for more than 20 years. It is a paradoxical approach to court reform intended to spur local police departments and prosecutors to complete investigations more quickly – or be forced to track down the defendant all over again.
Judge Janet Burnside, chairwoman of the court’s criminal rules committee, said the court set a 30-day deadline more than 15 years ago. But without penalty, it remained largely unenforceable – until now.
“It’s a hammer; it’s a sanction on the rest of this law enforcement system that we’re releasing these people without bond if they’re not indicted,” Burnside said. “Could they be indicted the very next day? Sure. But you’re going to have to issue an arrest warrant and bring them back in, because they won’t be sitting around, languishing in County Jail.”
Our view: Ohio has to spend smarter on prisoners
Dayton Daily News
3/16/2008
The Dayton Daily News editorial comments on Ohio’s prison overcrowding problem.
The overcrowding problem in Ohio’s prisons is so awful that when Gov. Ted Strickland’s administration backed off double-bunking at Dayton’s two prisons, the concession — significant though it was here — barely rippled in Columbus.
Ohio’s corrections department has 12,000 more inmates than it has beds. Putting 450 to 500 more people in Dayton would have helped ease the situation, but it obviously wasn’t going to solve or even dent the problem.
So what is Ohio going to do with all the inmates it doesn’t have space for, especially when that number is projected to grow by 15,000 more by 2016?
It’s good that Terry Collins, the head of Ohio’s corrections department, is emphatically telling the governor and lawmakers that building more prisons is not the answer. Prisons are tremendously expensive to put up and to run, and, once they’re constructed, they will be filled. The only way prisons get shut down is by a court order — when they’re so old and foul that humans can’t be put in them.
But if not more cell blocks and razor wire, then what?
[...]
Ohio is putting a lot of people in prison who just a little over a decade ago would have gotten a lecture, probation or a free pass. Judges’ discretion has been taken away with mandatory sentences; some penalties have increased; new crimes have been identified. In many cases, the individuals — including repeat drunken drivers, those convicted of multiple and especially violent domestic violence charges, and sexual offenders who’ve served their time, but failed to register with authorities — deserve real punishment.
But the questions are at what cost and where.
Prison Director Collins recently told legislators that sending the wrong people to prison can actually do more harm than good. In making those choices, Mr. Collins said, “We need to figure out who’s bad and who we’re just mad at.”
Prisons need to be for the worst of the worst.
U.S. needs to change its drug war policy
Midland Daily News, MI
3/16/2008
This editorial was written while the author was in Columbia.
One of these days some American president will figure out that the drug problem is nothing more than Economics 101 — this is not tough intellectual stuff. We will make no progress so long as our approach is to attack the “supply”side as we currently do, sponsoring massive chemical defoliating programs designed to destroy the coca crop will not stop the inflow of product and will only worsen the economic conditions for the peasants of this region. And if it were successful, our program of crop destruction would only serve to drive the price of cocaine and crack in the United States up. That of course would only mean more street crime and murder on the streets of America — the demand for drugs of this nature is “inelastic” and therefore not subject to price sensitivity.
Long term reduction will occur only when we domestically attack the demand side of the equation. In other words, the problem is more of a U.S. domestic matter and not one of foreign policy.
Washington State Supreme Court Rules Random Drug Testing Violates Students’ Constitutional Rights
Drug Policy Alliance
3/13/2008
The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that a random drug testing policy is unconstitutional.
The Washington State Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Wahkiakum School District’s random drug testing policy is unconstitutional and violates student athletes’ rights under the higher privacy protections of article I, section 7 of the Washington State Constitution.
The Drug Policy Alliance and the Washington Education Association (WEA) filed an amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) brief in the case arguing that random student drug testing is unsupported by scientific research, may deter students from participating in extracurricular activities, undermines trust in student-teacher relationships while creating a hostile school environment and may evoke oppositional behavior in students who may try to “beat” the test, among other concerns
The Rockefeller Drug Laws: 35 Years of Unjust, Biased Policy
Village Voice
3/07/2008
This article reviews the effect of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, enacted in 1973.
Among the toughest laws of their kind in the nation when they were passed 35 years ago, and even now after celebrated but humble reforms in 2004, the Rockefeller Drug Laws mandate severe prison sentences for anyone convicted of the possession and sale of relatively small amounts of narcotics, which included marijuana until 1979. Because the laws remove judicial discretion and mandate minimum sentences based on the amount of drug found on the person, and not his or her role in the transaction, advocates of repeal say that the Rockefeller Drug Laws brew a perfect social storm of ineffectiveness, racial basis, waste, and injustice.
America’s way of justice favors whites over blacks
Newsday.com
March 2, 2008
This article comments on the racial patterns of enforcement and imprisonment in the United States.
Another recent study revealed a stark contrast in the way blacks and whites are jailed for drug offenses, which account for a high percentage of prison populations. The Justice Policy Institute studied drug arrests in 198 of the largest U.S. counties, making up over half the nation’s population. All but two of these counties incarcerated blacks at a higher rate than whites. Suffolk County, where my wife and I raised three children, sent black drug offenders to prison at a rate some 36 times that of whites.
Such a shameful, national disparity in incarceration rates, according to the institute, occurred even with a pattern showing no appreciable difference between whites and blacks in illegal drug possession, use and sale. Some 8.5 percent of whites were found to use illicit drugs in ‘02, compared to 9.7 percent for blacks. Despite this similarity, African-Americans, the report found, were “admitted to prison for drug offenses [at] nearly 10 times the rate for whites.”