Category Archives: War On Drugs

Kesha releases her first album in five years, Rainbow (which features Eagles of Death Metal on two songs, Dolly Parton on a cover of her own song, and recent Kesha single Praying), next week (8/11). She announced a tour, including a NYC show on October 9 at Hammerstein Ballroom. Tickets go on sale Saturday (8/5) at 10 AM with various presales starting Thursday (8/3) at 10 AM.

TIckets for the Pinegrove, Saintseneca and Adult Mom show at Irving Plaza go on BrooklynVegan presale at 10 AM. Password HERE.

Tickets for the intimate Grizzly Bear release show at Public Arts go on sale at 10 AM. Tickets for one of their Brooklyn Steel shows are still available (the other is sold out).

Tickets for the War On Drugs and Craig Finn show at Terminal 5 go on AmEx presale at 10 AM. Tickets for TWODs Central Park show with Land of Talk are still available.

Tickets for the Primus show at Brooklyn Steel on Halloween go on AmEx presale at noon. Presales for the Capitol Theatre show start tomorrow.

Tickets for the Kamasi Washington show at Terminal 5 go on AmEx/Spotify presales at 10 AM.

Tickets for the Flogging Molly show at Starland Ballroom with Anti-Flag and Jon Snodgrass go on presale at 10 AM.

Tickets for The Underachievers show at Irving Plaza go on Live Nation/Music Geeks presales at 10 AM (passwords = chorus/musicgeeks).

Tickets for The Dream Syndicates show at Bowery Ballroom go on AmEx presale at 10 AM.

Tickets for Future Islands newly-added show at Brooklyn Steel go on AmEx presale at 10 AM. Tickets for night one are still available.

Tickets for the Mura Masa and Joey Purp show at Terminal 5 go on AmEx presale at noon.

Tickets for the Bully show at Music Hall of Williamsburg go on Spotify and AmEx presales at 10 AM and noon, respectively.

Tickets for the Japandroids and Cloud Nothings show at Brooklyn Steel are on sale now.

Tickets for the Rostam show at MHOW go on presale at 10 AM (password = ROSTAM).

Third Eye Blind are playing the Capitol Theater on October 7 and Asbury Parks Convention Hall on October 19. Tickets for the Cap and Asbury Park go on sale Friday (8/4) at 10 AM, with various presales starting tomorrow.

For more 90s rock nostalgia, Our Lady Peace are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Clumsy at Gramercy Theatre on October 23. Tickets go on various presales at 10 AM.

Holly Miranda is playing Union Pool on August 10 with Richard Aufrichtig (tickets).

Less Art (members of Thrice, Kowloon Walled City, and Curl Up & Die) are releasing their debut album and going on a Northeast tour with Vattnet, which BrooklynVegan is presenting. Theyll be at Mercury Lounge 9/14 (tickets), Middle East in Boston 9/15 (tickets), Songbyrd in DC 9/16 (tickets), and Underground Arts in Philly 9/17 (tickets).

Dinosaur Jr are back in NYC this fall for two shows at Brooklyn Bowl, 10/2 (tickets) and 10/3 (tickets). BrooklynVegan is psyched to be presenting these shows, which are opened by Easy Action (John Brannon from Negative Approachs other band)

Sparks is playing a few shows with a full band this fall. BrooklynVegan is excited to present the NYC show, at Le Poisson Rouge 10/11 (tickets)

Alex Lahey is releasing her debut album on Dead Oceans, and returns to NYC for a BrooklynVegan presented show at Music Hall of Williamsburg 11/16 (tickets)

Stay tuned for the next BrooklynVegan-presented edition of Music Driven at Nitehawk Cinema.

CONTESTS Win tickets to Fleet Foxes show at BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival at Prospect Park TONIGHT. Win tickets to The Nationals show at Forest Hills Stadium. Win a pair of three-day passes to The Meadows Win tickets to Less Arts show at Mercury Lounge Win tickets and a meet-and-greet to one of Mews NYC shows

SOME UPCOMING SHOWS AT TERMINAL 5 8/21: Midnight Oil (tickets) 10/13 & 10/14: Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue (tickets)

Little Dragon have shows at Terminal 5 on 8/29 and The Apollo on 8/31 (tickets).

Seu Jorges tribute to David Bowie, The Life Aquatic Tour, returns to NYC with a show at Beacon Theatre on 9/27 (tickets).

WARSAW 9/10: (Thee) Oh Sees (tickets) 9/13: Dead Cross (tickets) 10/22: The Psychedelic Furs (tickets) 11/18: Hot Water Music (tickets)

Newport Jazz Festival happens from August 4-6 this year at International Tennis Hall of Fame at the Newport Casino and Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island. See the full lineup, which includes Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, The Roots, Snarky Puppy, Maceo Parker, Branford Marsalis, Andra Day, Cecile McLorin, Rhiannon Giddens, Maria Schneider Orchestra and more, and get festival passes and single day tickets here.

St. Vincent plays Kings Theatre on 12/2 (sold out) and 12/3 (tickets)

SUMMERSTAGE & CELEBRATE BROOKLYN 8/02 @ Prospect Park: Fleet Foxes (tickets) 9/14 @ Central Park: Patti Smith (tickets) 9/21 @ Central Park: The Head and The Heart (tickets)

Tegan & Sara celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Con at Kings Theatre on 11/8 (tickets)

STONE PONY SUMMERSTAGE 8/25: The Bouncing Souls with Lucero, The Menzingers, Mickey Rickshaw and Timeshares (tickets) 8/26: Gary Clark Jr with Michael Kiwanuka (tickets) 9/10: Shadow of the City with Brian Fallon, Titus Andronicus, Bleachers, and more (tickets) 9/23: Pixies with Sunflower Bean (tickets) 10/6: Rise Against with White Lung and Piece the Veil (tickets)

Gillian Welch plays Beacon Theatre with Dave Rawlings on 8/2 (tickets)

Mac DeMarco plays Radio City on September 22 (tickets)

Benjamin Clementine plays Carnegie Hall on 10/5.

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tix on sale: Grizzly Bear, Kesha, War on Drugs, Primus, Kamasi, more - Brooklyn Vegan (blog)

The United States has been waging a war on drugs for nearly 50 years.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this long campaign to thwart the production, distribution, sale and use of illegal drugs. This sustained investment has resulted in millions of drug offenders being processed through the American criminal justice system. It has also influenced crime control strategies used by American police.

Under President Barack Obama, there was a period of reform and moderating of tactics. But President Donald Trumps attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is announcing plans to return to law and order approaches, such as aggressive intervention by law enforcement and use of mandatory minimum sentences by prosecutors.

I recently co-authored a book with University of Louisville criminal justice professor Richard Tewksbury on the role of confidential informants. In my view, a return to a law and order approach would undo recent gains in reducing crime rates as well as prison populations and would further strain tense police-community relations.

Unlike violent or property crimes which usually yield cooperative victims and witnesses police and prosecutors are at a disadvantage when fighting drugs. Drug users dont see themselves as crime victims or their dealers as criminals.

Police thus have limited options for identifying offenders. Alternatives include the use of undercover operations or conducting aggressive crackdown operations to disrupt the market in real time. But sneaking up on or infiltrating secretive and multilayered drug organizations is not easy to do, and usually produces only low-level offenders.

Poor police-community relations dont help. Heightened enforcement and punishments have made matters worse by increasing the secrecy and sophistication of the illegal drug market and forcing police to develop criminal intelligence on offenders.

So how do police gather criminal intelligence on drug crimes?

The most honorable way is to rely on law-abiding sources who see the criminal activity and feel compelled to report it to the police in order to stop the problem.

The second option is for police to turn to a paid informant who is familiar with the drug operations to set up a buy or inform on the criminal activities of others in exchange for money.

A third option is to apprehend known drug offenders and coerce them into divulging information on higher-ups in exchange for a lighter sentence. We call these folks indentured informants because they owe the police information. If they dont follow through on their end of the deal, they face the weight of criminal prosecution, often through heavy mandatory minimum sentences.

As police-community relations have eroded over time, police have slowly but surely increased their reliance on criminal informants especially to develop cases on higher-level criminals.

Mandatory minimum sentences serve as a strong motivator to snitch. It has become the go-to move for authorities.

Not surprisingly, drug dealers fight back against this coercive method of getting evidence with a stop snitchin campaign. Retaliatory violence often erupts, and it becomes harder for police to get evidence from both criminal and civic-minded informants who fear reprisals from drug dealers. Anger grows against police who are perceived as not following through on promises to protect witnesses or clean up neighborhoods.

There exists yet another wrinkle in the equation. Reliance on harsh drug sentences and confidential informants has become part and parcel to how other types of criminal cases are solved.

Witnesses or persons privy to information in homicide or robbery cases are routinely prodded into cooperating only after they find themselves facing a stiff penalty due to their involvement in an unrelated drug case.

Here again, this produces short-term gains but long-term complications for criminal justice authorities as states move to decriminalize or legalize drugs. What happens when prosecutors working violent or property crime cases can no longer rely on the threat of mandatory minimum sentences to compel individuals to provide information?

By exploiting intelligence sources and putting them at risk, the war on drugs has pitted the police against residents in drug-ridden communities. This runs contrary to the ideals of community policing, in which trust and legitimacy are essential to members of the community and law enforcement collaborating to prevent and combat crime.

The past decade has witnessed significant reforms within the criminal justice system, particularly as it relates to drug enforcement. Authorities have sought to integrate a public health approach into the long-standing criminal justice model and adopt a more patient and long-term view on the drug problem.

In the end, the reliance on informants and mandatory minimum sentences creates numerous unanticipated negative consequences which will continue to grow if we revert back to them.

Dean A. Dabney is an associate professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State University. This piece was originally published by The Conversation.

Read the rest here:

GUEST COMMENTARY: Reviving the war on drugs will further harm police-community relations - Columbia Missourian

Bangkok: When Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was running for election, he vowed that under his rule fish inManilaBaywould grow fat from the bodies of drugs users and addicts.

Many observers saw his remarks as shock tacticsfrom a foul-mouthed former provincial mayor who revels in making outlandish statements, such as declaring recently he could be 50 times more brutal than any Islamist extremist who staged beheadings.

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At least two people are killed in the Philippines days after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte pulls the police off the war on drugs on worries over corruption. On Tuesday, Duterte said he may seek military help in their stead.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed advanced orders for the lower-priced Model 3 electric vehicle topped half a million as he handed over the first 30 keys to employee buyers.

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Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's wife Grace has asked the 93-year-old leader to name his successor. However, President Mugabe said he is not stepping down.

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In a major shakeup of his top team, Donald Trump has replaced White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus with retired General John Kelly.

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Utah man Kenneth Manzanares has been charged with killing his wife aboard an Alaskan cruise. He allegedly told an acquaintance he did it because she wouldn't stop laughing at him.

At least two people are killed in the Philippines days after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte pulls the police off the war on drugs on worries over corruption. On Tuesday, Duterte said he may seek military help in their stead.

"Give me salt and vinegar and I'll eat his liver," he said.

But 12 months after taking office, fishermen say they have been dumping bodies of dozens of drugs suspects inManilaBayon the orders of police, who human rights groups accuse of carrying out thousands of extra-judicial killings.

"Police are the ones coming to my house ordering me to take out the trash," said Manuel, a fisherman, referring to bodies found on the side of highways.

"We usually throw them inManilaBay sometimes we put weights on them so they don't float up," Manuel told al-Jazeera's correspondent inManila.

He said he had personally disposed of 20 bodies.

Get the latest news and updates emailed straight to your inbox.

Mr Duterte pledged earlier this month that his so-called "war on drugs" would continue relentlessly, saying drugs dealers face "either jail or hell".

"Illegal drugs are the root cause of much evil and so much suffering that weaken the social fabric and deters foreign investment from pouring in," he said.

According to human rights groups, Philippine security forces and "unidentified gunmen" have killed almost 8000 Filipino drugs suspects, the largest number of civilian deaths in South-east Asia since the Khmer Rouge genocide inCambodiain the 1970s.

But police are no longer releasing the body count after international condemnation of the killings, including from the United Nations, which Mr Duterte has blocked from carrying out an independent investigation.

Rights investigators and media outlets, including Fairfax Media, have detailed dozens of cases where mostly poor Filipinos have been dragged from their homes and executed.

Mr Duterte shrugs off the criticisms, describing critics as "crazies", as his popularity remains high in a country with one of the highest rates of drugs use inAsia.

In one of his most controversial statements he said "if you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be painful".

Philippine police and the country's drug enforcement agency claim the crackdown is working, with more than 1.3 million drug suspects surrendering and tonnes of drugs seized.

More:

Philippine fishermen say they are dumping bodies in Duterte's 'war on drugs' - The Sydney Morning Herald

Attorney General Jeff Sessions at an April meeting of the executive committee of the Organized Crime Council and Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces. (Alex Brandon / AP)

The war on drugs in the United States didnt work the first time, so Jeff Sessions wants to give it another shot. Thanks to a new policy announced Thursday by the U.S. attorney general, people convicted on drug charges now can expect to receive a stiff minimum sentence. The policy change follows the Obama administrations sweeping reduction in harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, a move that won support across the political spectrum.

In May, Sessions sent a memorandum to federal prosecutors across the country urging them to charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense in all criminal cases, even though overall crime is lower than it has been in decades. The following day, Sessions delivered remarks at the Drug Enforcement Administration 360 Heroin and Opioid Response Summit in West Virginia and emphasized that criminal enforcement is crucial to stopping the violent transnational cartels that smuggle drugs across our borders, and the thugs and gangs who bring this poison into our communities.

Vice News elaborates:

If that language sounds familiar, its because Ronald Reagan said something eerily similar in 1988, when many of the current mandatory minimums were put on the books. We cannot tolerate criminals who violate our borders, terrorize our communities, or poison our citizens, Reagan said, laying the groundwork for his new strategy to reduce the supply and demand for illegal drugs.

Nearly 30 years later, theres still ample supply and booming demand for drugs. And now, after the federal governments brief experiment with an alternative approach, Sessions is ensuring that the strategy for fighting the war on drugs will regress.

The bad effects of the so-called war on drugsunfair treatment of people of color and the poor, an immense cost to taxpayers, overcrowded prisons and little to no reduction in drug-related crime or recidivism ratesseem to be completely lost on Sessions.

Amid the overwhelming evidence that minimum sentences for nonviolent federal drug offenses do little except exacerbate mass incarcerationwhich is perhaps the most pressing civil rights problem of our timeits hard to imagine that Sessions return to old policies is not just an attempt to tighten governmental control over people of color and the poor.

Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison calls Sessions a racist and views his rise to attorney general as a nightmare scenario, the MinnPost reports. Hes horrible on every issue. He believes in using the criminal justice system as an instrument of racial and economic control of poor people and brown people, Ellison charged.

Focusing on drug offenses at the federal level has proved futile before, even though Sessions argues that the 2015 rise in murder rates was somehow a result of a 2013 directive by his predecessor, Eric Holder, that scaled back federal prosecutions in lower-level drug cases. The Washington Post explains:

First, federal prosecutors handle fewer than 10 percent of all criminal cases, so a modest change in their charging policy with respect to a subset of drug cases is unlikely to have a nationwide impact on crime. The other 90 percent of criminal prosecution is conducted by state prosecutors, who were not affected by Holders policy.

Second, the few individuals who benefited from Holders policy by definition lacked a sustained history of crime or violence or any connections to major drug traffickers.

Third, the increases in violent crime that Sessions cites are not nationally uniform, which one would expect if they were attributable to federal policy. In 2015, murder rates rose in Chicago, Cleveland, and Baltimore, to be sure. But they declined in Boston and El Paso, and stayed relatively steady in New York, Las Vegas, Detroit and Atlanta. If federal drug policy were responsible for the changes, we would not see such dramatic variances from city to city.

The ACLU released a statement saying that Sessions is pushing federal prosecutors to reverse progress and repeat a failed experiment. Additionally, a former Senate staffer who helped draft a prominent minimum-sentencing law supported by Sessions says now that the legislation has proved to be ineffective and poorly thought out.

In June, the History Channel aired a four-part documentary series called Americas War on Drugs. The series asserts that the war on drugs was actually a war of drugsand that the CIA was essentially a partner in spreading drugs and drug use. The series follows how the U.S. intelligence agency, in an obsession with fighting communism, allied itself with U.S. organized crime and foreign drug traffickers and includes firsthand accounts from many involved. In an interview with Truthdig columnist Sonali Kolhatkar on her radio program Rising Up With Sonali, the series executive producer, Anthony Lapp, explains why the CIA got involved:

Its actually a pretty mind-blowing story when you look at the extent to which the CIA was involved with drug traffickers and drug trafficking throughout the Cold War. If you look at Cold War policy against the Soviet Union, we were locked in a global battle for supremacy, where we have lots of proxy wars going on. We needed to team up with local allies, and often the local allies we were teaming up with were people who had access to guns, who had access to underground networks, to help us fight the perceived threat of communism. There are actually a lot of similarities between what drug traffickers do and what the CIA does.

Lapp elaborates by saying the hypocrisy of the war on drugs has been evident from the start: Secret CIA experiments with LSD helped fuel the counterculture movement, leading to President Richard Nixons crackdown and declaration of the war on drugs.

The series also explores the CIAs role in the rise of crack cocaine in poor black communities and a secret island cocaine base. In addition the documentary makes the connection between the war on drugs, the war on terror and the transformation of Afghanistan into a narco state and contends that American intervention in Mexico helped give clout to Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn and the super cartels, making it easier to send drugs across American borders.

Watch Kolhatkars full interview with Lapp below.

Perhaps the serieswhich offered a thorough analysis of the CIAs involvement in the global drug trade for the first time on mainstream cable televisionmight be of interest to Jeff Sessions.

Posted by Emily Wells

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The War on Drugs Is a Failure, So Jeff Sessions Is All for It - Truthdig

Its a fact that may surprise many liberals: Mass incarceration is a result of way more than the war on drugs.

Over the past few years, long prison sentences for low-level drug offenses have gotten a lot of attention in the media and the public for contributing to higher incarceration rates. But a new report by the Urban Institute suggests it's not these low-level sentences that really helped cause higher imprisonment rates in the US, but rather sentences for violent crimes like murder.

The report is just the latest in a growing body of evidence that mass incarceration has been caused far more by rising punishments for violent offenses than drug offenses and it complicates the traditional liberal narrative about how the US became the world leader in incarceration.

The reports big finding is summed up by the following map:

Lets break this down. First, there are two categories the map above is tracking: the top 10 percent longest time served in prison and the bottom 90 percent. The top 10 percent is marked by the light blue lines, while the bottom 90 percent is marked by the black lines.

This effectively compares prison sentences for the most extreme violent crimes with lower-level crimes, including drug offenses. Among people sentenced before age 25 and serving the longest prison sentences, 94 percent were convicted for violent offenses, and 69 percent of those violent offenders were convicted of murder.

The map shows that time served for the bottom 90 percent didnt increase much, if at all, in most states with the important exception of California, given that its the most populous state. Instead, the much bigger increase was seen in the top 10 percent.

What this shows, essentially, is that prison sentence length for lower-level offenses did not increase much, while prison sentence length for some of the worst offenses vastly increased.

Longer sentences are stacking up, Ryan King, the lead researcher for the Urban report, told me. And in many states, the data suggest that theyre stacking up at a rate significant enough that it can offset reforms for the less serious offenses.

The report includes various other findings. It found there are vast racial disparities in the top 10 percent of prison sentences, just as there are for lower-level offenses. The people locked up also tend to be fairly young, which robs communities particularly black neighborhoods of people who could grow up to be productive citizens instead of serving out disproportionately harsh sentences. It also told the stories of a few people who suffered through some of these long sentences. You should really read the whole thing.

But I want to home in on the big finding because it shows what the traditional story about mass incarceration has gotten wrong. Much of the attention has gone to harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, but they seem to have had a fairly small impact on overall incarceration rates. What seemed to change, instead, is that the system enforced longer prison sentences for some of the worst offenses and that led to a lot more imprisonment.

The findings really give more credence to the growing body of evidence that prison sentences for violent, not drug, offenses have led to a sharp rise in US incarceration levels.

Perhaps the best source for all the evidence so far is criminologist John Pfaffs book Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, for which you can read my book review as well.

Heres the short version: Much of the attention to mass incarceration, including from reform efforts, has gone to low-level offenses, especially for drug and property crimes. In large part, this is likely a result of the media focusing too much on the federal prison system instead of the state prison systems: While about half of federal prisoners are in for drug crimes, only about 16 percent of state prisoners are and more than half of state prisoners are in for violent crimes.

This is notable because the great majority 87 percent of prisoners in the US are housed at the state level, not the federal level. So to greatly reduce incarceration, the country will need to focus on the state level. And to do a lot at the state level, the US will need to reduce the incarceration of violent offenders.

This obviously gets a lot trickier, politically, than addressing low-level drug offenses. A poll conducted by Morning Consult for Vox last year, for example, found that nearly eight in 10 US voters support reducing prison sentences for people who committed a nonviolent crime and have a low risk of reoffending. But fewer than three in 10 backed shorter prison sentences for people who committed a violent crime and have a low risk of reoffending.

Its one of the spaces where the policy and public safety arguments are going to have the least impact, Pfaff acknowledged, because many will view it as the right thing to do to lock them up forever.

But there are ways to cut prison sentences for violent offenders without leading to more crime.

For one, incarceration is simply not a good way to combat crime. A 2015 review of the research by the Brennan Center for Justice estimated that more incarceration and its abilities to incapacitate or deter criminals explained about 0 to 7 percent of the crime drop since the 1990s. Other researchers estimate it drove 10 to 25 percent of the crime drop since the 90s. And a 2014 analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that states that reduced their imprisonment rates also saw some of the biggest drops in crime, suggesting that there isnt a hard link between incarceration and crime.

These figures explain the cause against mass incarceration: Not only does it deprive a lot of people of their rights and take a lot of people out of their communities, but it also isnt even particularly effective at stopping crime.

The research also shows that people age out of crime. A 60-year-old is simply much less likely to attack or rob someone than is a 20-year-old. That means its possible to sentence violent offenders to five, 10, or 20 years instead of 30 or 40 years, or life without dramatically increasing the chances that theyll reoffend.

There are also new ideas for reintegrating people into society without the threat of long prison sentences. Researchers Mark Kleiman, Angela Hawken, and Ross Halperin, for example, suggested a graduated reentry system that would support people who are released from prison and then slowly give them back their rights as they hit certain milestones, such as getting and keeping a job.

This kind of policy, along with reductions in legislative mandates for lengths of prison sentences, could help cut how much time even violent offenders serve in prison. And that would help address a major contributor to mass incarceration, based on Urbans analysis.

Still, there are limits to how far simply cutting prison sentences, particularly at the legislative level, could go.

Typically, much of the attention in the criminal justice reform world goes to cutting lengthy prison sentences for drugs particularly mandatory minimums that require judges to impose a lengthy punishment even if they dont want to. Similarly, reformers might think its a good idea to focus on cutting the length of long prison sentences for violent crimes as well.

Pfaff argues this would only go so far because the problem goes much deeper than what state law says is an appropriate sentence for a certain crime. He points to how the sentences are implemented at the local level, particularly by prosecutors.

Looking at California county-level data, Pfaff highlighted that some counties have much higher median sentences for their worst offenders than others. So while the state median for time served among the 95th percentile was 23 years in 2014, it was 33.5 years for San Francisco County, nearly 25 years for Los Angeles County, and 21 years for Sacramento County. The differences between high-population counties suggest there is a lot of variation in how prosecutors enforce the laws that state policymakers create for them.

Theres an incredibly different story across counties, even among counties with similar populations, Pfaff argued. We dont want to lose sight of trying to regulate the prosecutors, the plea deals they make, and how they charge people.

Pfaffs finding dovetails with some of his earlier work, which found that prosecutors not more arrests or crime drove much of the increase in incarceration since the 1990s. Analyzing data from state judiciaries, he compared the number of crimes, arrests, and prosecutions from 1994 to 2008. He found that reported violent and property crime fell, and arrests for almost all crimes also fell. But one thing went up: the number of felony cases filed in court. In short, prosecutors were filing more charges even as crime and arrests dropped, throwing more people into the prison system. Prosecutors were driving mass incarceration.

So to really crack down on mass incarceration, policymakers will need to find a way to reel back prosecutors on top of the kind of policy recommendations that Urban makes for reducing prison sentences and time served.

This also shows just how complicated the problem really is. We often talk about the US criminal justice system as if its just one system. In reality, its more than 3,100 systems, representing every county and county equivalent in America. As Pfaff wrote in his book, [T]he term criminal justice system is a misnomer; criminal justice is, at best, a set of systems, and at worst it is a swirling mess of somewhat antagonistic agencies.

To really address the problem of mass incarceration, then, its not enough to just focus on drug crimes; its also important to focus on violent offenses. Its also not enough to just focus on the laws guiding prison sentences; its also necessary to look at how those laws are enforced in the real world. And addressing all of these issues will require a truly systemic effort from addressing what the local prosecutor is doing to what laws state policymakers pass to what the president and his attorney general are asking the US Department of Justice to do.

It will be a long, arduous effort. After years of lawmakers building up incarceration at every level of government, it will likely take years of more policymaking at every level of government to unwind what previous generations of leaders have done.

This is a long-term project, King of Urban said. But we do see it as one thats ringing a bell saying, look, were going to have to deal with this.

Read the original here:

Liberals often blame mass incarceration on the war on drugs. That's not quite right. - Vox

DAMIEN GRANT

Last updated05:00, July 30 2017

ANDY JACKSON/STUFF

Recent deaths from the use of synthetic cannabis are proof of the dangers of taking manufacturing from legitimate business to criminals, writes Damien Grant.

OPINION: The Coroner and police recently alerted the public to eight deaths from the consumption of illegally manufactured synthetic cannabis. The Prime Minister's response is to emphasise personal responsibility, which is odd.

We do not expect the public to take personal responsibility for financing their own healthcare, their children's education or even their own accommodation in the case of the 180,000 people living in state housing.

We regulate our food, house construction, types of petrol and even the effectiveness of sunscreen. But when it comes to young people wanting to get high we demand a level of personal responsibility that we do not expect from the rest of society and leave them exposed to the vicissitudes of a black market stripped from the normal restraints and transparency imposed by commerce.

DAVID WHITE/STUFF

Given Bill English is keen on personal responsibility, perhaps he'd like to accept some for his part in devising a broken system, writes Damien Grant.

One of the few recent parliamentary achievements has been the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013 that, in theory, outlines a pathway for hallucinations to be legally manufactured. In the interim, a small number of existing products were permitted. There were 41 in total.

READ MORE: *Drug law is government-run Russian roulette *Sorry seems to be the hardest word forTurei

Tragically, politics intervened. In April 2014, in reaction to a moral panic in the media and Labour leader David Cunliffe's pending announcement that he wanted to remove those 41 products, Peter Dunne and the Government panicked. All psychoactive substances were banned until they had been through the Act's now impossibly onerous testing regime.

Cunliffe claimed success:"I'd call this a victory for the Opposition, rolling the Government on a situation that was doing immeasurable harm to young New Zealanders".

What the Government was doing was something politically courageous and exactly in-tune with standard left-liberal thinking, but Cunliffe saw a short-term political advantage and could not help himself.

In response to a media beat-up to some people getting sick by taking a commercially manufactured product, the public demanded government action. What the public needed, however, was leadership.

The Government knew, as did the Opposition, that banning these products would not stop people seeking them, nor stop their production. The recent fatalities are a direct consequence of moving their manufacture from the commercial hands of legitimate business people to those prepared to risk decades in jail for a quick buck.

The lesson should be that prohibition leads to the unintended consequences of unsafe products being sold to the vulnerable. What we will get is the police, media and public demanding more aggressive policing and harsher sentences. We will get our wish.

Given Bill English is keen on personal responsibility, perhaps he'd like to accept some for his part in devising a broken system and make amends by providing leadership and tell the public the painful truth: the criminalisation of narcotics has been a failure.

-Sunday Star Times

Go here to see the original:

Damien Grant: Government's war on drugs has been a failure - Stuff.co.nz

An officer and his dog walk the halls at a school in Indianapolis.

The United States has been waging a war on drugs for nearly 50 years.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this long campaign to thwart the production, distribution, sale and use of illegal drugs. This sustained investment has resulted in millions of drug offenders being processed through the American criminal justice system. It has also influenced crime control strategies used by American police.

Under President Barack Obama, there was a period of reform and moderating of tactics. But President Donald Trumps attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is announcing plans to return to law and order approaches, such as aggressive intervention by law enforcement and use of mandatory minimum sentences by prosecutors.

I recently co-authored a book with University of Louisville criminal justice professor Richard Tewksbury on the role of confidential informants. In my view, a return to a law and order approach would undo recent gains in reducing crime rates as well as prison populations and would further strain tense police-community relations.

Unlike violent or property crimes which usually yield cooperative victims and witnesses police and prosecutors are at a disdvantage when fighting drugs. Drug users dont see themselves as crime victims or their dealers as criminals. Police thus have limited options for identifying offenders. Alternatives include the use of undercover operations or conducting aggressive crackdown operations to disrupt the market in real time. But sneaking up on or infiltrating secretive and multilayered drug organizations is not easy to do, and usually produces only low-level offenders. Poor police-community relations dont help. Heightened enforcement and punishments have made matters worse by increasing the secrecy and sophistication of the illegal drug market and forcing police to develop criminal intelligence on offenders.

So how do police gather criminal intelligence on drug crimes?

The most honorable way is to rely on law-abiding sources who see the criminal activity and feel compelled to report it to the police in order to stop the problem.

The second option is for police to turn to a paid informant who is familiar with the drug operations to set up a buy or inform on the criminal activities of others in exchange for money.

A third option is to apprehend known drug offenders and coerce them into divulging information on higher-ups in exchange for a lighter sentence. We call these folks indentured informants because they owe the police information. If they dont follow through on their end of the deal, they face the weight of criminal prosecution, often through heavy mandatory minimum sentences.

As police-community relations have eroded over time, police have slowly but surely increased their reliance on criminal informants especially to develop cases on higher-level criminals.

Mandatory minimum sentences serve as a strong motivator to snitch. It has become the go-to move for authorities.

Not surprisingly, drug dealers fight back against this coercive method of getting evidence with a stop snitchin campaign. Retaliatory violence often erupts, and it becomes harder for police to get evidence from both criminal and civic-minded informants who fear reprisals from drug dealers. Anger grows against police who are perceived as not following through on promises to protect witnesses or clean up neighborhoods.

There exists yet another wrinkle in the equation. Reliance on harsh drug sentences and confidential informants has become part and parcel to how other types of criminal cases are solved. Witnesses or persons privy to information in homicide or robbery cases are routinely prodded into cooperating only after they find themselves facing a stiff penalty due to their involvement in an unrelated drug case. Here again, this produces short-term gains but long-term complications for criminal justice authorities as states move to decriminalize or legalize drugs. What happens when prosecutors working violent or property crime cases can no longer rely on the threat of mandatory minimum sentences to compel individuals to provide information?

By exploiting intelligence sources and putting them at risk, the war on drugs has pitted the police against residents in drug-ridden communities. This runs contrary to the ideals of community policing, in which trust and legitimacy are essential to members of the community and law enforcement collaborating to prevent and combat crime.

The past decade has witnessed significant reforms within the criminal justice system, particularly as it relates to drug enforcement. Authorities have sought to integrate a public health approach into the long-standing criminal justice model and adopt a more patient and long-term view on the drug problem. In the end, the reliance on informants and mandatory minimum sentences creates numerous unanticipated negative consequences which will continue to grow if we revert back to them.

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Reviving the war on drugs will further harm police-community relations - The Conversation US

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Paying black people reparations for the war on drugs? Not as crazy as it sounds Sacramento Bee (blog) The abandoned houses. The crumbling infrastructure. The struggling families. The devastation from the drug war was still there, the president of California Urban Partnership told me over coffee last week. All of the pain and suffering from ...

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte addresses thousands of protesters following his state of the nation address outside the Lower House Monday, July 24, 2017 in Quezon city, northeast of Manila, Philippines. Bullit Marquez / AP

Thousands of protesters marched outside Congress demanding he deliver on a range of promises which mirror the diverse burdens of his presidency, from protecting human rights to improving internet speed.

A look at the most serious issues confronting Duterte as he enters his second year in power.

ISLAMIC STATE-LINKED SIEGE

Two months after more than 600 pro-Islamic State group militants blasted their way into the southern city of Marawi, the military is still fighting the last gunmen fewer than 100, about 10 of them foreign. Duterte told reporters after his speech Monday that the government counteroffensive will not stop "until the last terrorist is taken out."

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The crisis, however, may not end soon, according to Duterte, because troops have to move carefully to ensure the safety of about 300 hostages he said are being held by the gunmen. "I don't want these innocent people to be slaughtered," he said.

Congress overwhelmingly voted on Saturday to grant Duterte's request to extend martial law in the south to the end of the year to allow Duterte to deal with the Marawi crisis and stamp out other extremist groups across the south, something five presidents before him have failed to do.

About half a million people have been displaced by the Marawi fighting. Some have threatened to march back to the still-besieged city to escape the squalor in overcrowded evacuation camps in nearby towns. Rebuilding Marawi will require massive funds and national focus and will be fraught with pitfalls. Amid the despair and gargantuan rebuilding, it's important "to ensure that extremist teachings do not find fertile ground," said Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict.

DRUG WAR

Despite criticism and threats of criminal prosecution, Duterte said his drug crackdown, which has left thousands of suspects dead, will go on. "Do not try to scare me with prison or the International Court of Justice," he said Monday. "I'm willing to go to prison for the rest of my life." He reiterated his plea that Congress reimpose the death penalty for drug offenders and others.

"The fight will not stop until those who deal in (drugs) understand that they have to stop because the alternatives are either jail or hell," Duterte said, to applause from his national police chief, Ronald del Rosa, and other supporters in the audience.

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During the campaign, he promised to rid the country of illegal drugs in three to six months and repeatedly threatened traffickers with death. But he missed his deadline and later declared he would fight the menace until his last day in office. When then-U.S. President Barack Obama, along with European Union and U.N. rights officials, raised alarm over the mounting death toll from the crackdown, Duterte lashed out at them, telling Obama to "go to hell." Duterte's fiercest critic at home, Sen. Leila del Lima, was detained in February on drug charges she said were baseless.

More than 5,200 suspects have died so far, including more than 3,000 in reported gunbattles with police and more than 2,000 others in drug-related attacks by motorcycle-riding masked gunmen and other assaults, police said. Human rights groups have reported a higher toll and called for an independent investigation into Duterte's possible role in the violence.

Duterte "has unleashed a human rights calamity on the Philippines in his first year in office," U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said. In April, a lawyer filed a complaint of crimes against humanity against Duterte and other officials in connection with the drug killings before the International Criminal Court. An impeachment complaint against the president was dismissed in the House of Representatives, which is dominated by Duterte's allies.

SOUTH CHINA SEA

More than a month into Duterte's presidency, the Philippines won a landmark arbitration case before a tribunal in The Hague that invalidated China's massive territorial claims in the South China Sea under a 1982 U.N. maritime treaty.

Aiming to turn around his country's frosty relations with China, Duterte refused to demand immediate Chinese compliance with the ruling. He promised he would take it up with Beijing at some point. Confronting China, which has dismissed the ruling as a sham, risks sparking an armed conflict that the Philippines would surely lose, Duterte contended.

In a news conference Monday, Duterte said he told Chinese President Xi Jinping during a Beijing visit last year that the Philippines would drill for oil in disputed areas it asserts as its own, and that Xi responded that such an action would spark an armed confrontation.

Nationalists and critics blasted Duterte for what they see as a sellout to China. After the Xi meeting, China allowed Filipino fishermen to return to Chinese-controlled Scarborough Shoal, where Chinese coast guard ships drove Filipinos away in 2012.

The Philippines had been the most vocal critic of China's assertive behavior in the disputed waters until Duterte took power and reached out to Beijing, partly to secure funding for infrastructure projects.

His move has de-escalated tensions in the busy sea, but critics have warned that Duterte's friendly overtures to China may erode the country's chances of demanding that China comply with the ruling and relinquish its claims to waters regarded as the Philippines' exclusive economic zone.

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Philippine President Duterte Vows to Continue Nation's War on Drugs - NBCNews.com

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Russia sanctions, reparations for the war on drugs, and deaths in San Antonio Sacramento Bee Erika D. Smith: Paying black people reparations for the war on drugs? Not as crazy as it sounds: People of color who went to prison for selling marijuana are on the verge of being cut out of California's legal industry. Op-Eds. Eloy Ortiz Oakley, Ben ...

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