Blog#212-8/17/24
WILL JAIL TIME BE A DETERRENT?
By Richard Davis
A lot of people in Brattleboro are agonizing over how to make our downtown safer. There has been no lack of suggestions. I have done a little bit of research into how other communities deal with similar problems and, once again, there are no simple solutions.
Yet, I am beginning to think that we need to use a tool that has been rejected by most communities as being too cruel. That is having police and the court system lock people up who are breaking the law, no matter what level they are operating on.
As things stand now most street people know that the worst that might happen to them for breaking the law is having to spend a night of two in the local jail and having to make a court appearance. It is a small price to pay for being allowed to shoot up in public or deal drugs out in the open in downtown Brattleboro.
Here is current Vermont law relating to heroin possession:
“(a) Possession.
(1) A person knowingly and unlawfully possessing heroin shall be imprisoned not more than one year or fined not more than $2,000.00, or both.
(2) A person knowingly and unlawfully possessing heroin in an amount consisting of 200 milligrams or more of one or more preparations, compounds, mixtures, or substances containing heroin shall be imprisoned not more than five years or fined not more than $100,000.00, or both.
(3) A person knowingly and unlawfully possessing heroin in an amount consisting of one gram or more of one or more preparations, compounds, mixtures, or substances containing heroin shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years or fined not more than $250,000.00, or both.
(4) A person knowingly and unlawfully possessing heroin in an amount consisting of two grams or more of one or more preparations, compounds, mixtures, or substances containing heroin shall be imprisoned not more than 20 years or fined not more than $1,000,000.00, or both.”
If these laws were upheld consistently and people knew that they would spend at least a year in jail I have to believe that it would provide some degree of deterrence. It would be easy to make the argument that the threat of jail time will not stop the scourge of addiction. But it might be used as a short term measure to clean up the streets for a short period of time.
I would suggest that we pass harsher laws for illegal drug possession and use and find a way for the court system to impose mandatory sentences. We should still continue to offer rehab and treatment for addiction but why not provide those services within the confines of a prison? If a person got clean and showed the ability to stay that way then the law could allow for their sentence to be shortened. Repeat offenders should be subject to longer sentences.
Too many communities are trying to be compassionate in dealing with addicted people and these efforts often cross the line into enabling. Oregon tried to be compassionate and eliminated jail time as an option for drug offences. The program turned out to be a major failure but supporters pointed out that the new law showed that their funding for treatment was inadequate.
Some states do have harsh laws for sale and use of drugs and many so-called experts point out that these types of measures are not providing a great deal of deterrence. It is clear there are no easy solutions for communities, but I think Brattleboro has reached a point where we need to clean up the streets now and make the criminal justice system work better for the victims and not the criminals. The balance has shifted and we need to restore it.
2018 PEW Study says... NO
More Imprisonment Does Not Reduce State Drug Problems
Data show no relationship between prison terms and drug misuse
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2018/03/more-imprisonment-does-not-reduce-state-drug-problems
The report says that what Brattleboro is doing, actually, is probably close to the best way to handle things.
Their conclusion:
“Although no amount of policy analysis can resolve disagreements about how much punishment drug offenses deserve, research does make clear that some strategies for reducing drug use and crime are more effective than others and that imprisonment ranks near the bottom of that list. And surveys have found strong public support for changing how states and the federal government respond to drug crimes.
Putting more drug-law violators behind bars for longer periods of time has generated enormous costs for taxpayers, but it has not yielded a convincing public safety return on those investments. Instead, more imprisonment for drug offenders has meant limited funds are siphoned away from programs, practices, and policies that have been proved to reduce drug use and crime.”
This is the Completely Wrong Approach
The penalties were intensified thirty years ago with great societal harm.
No to incarceration. The prison state serves few at great expense to the many.
Try rehabilitation.
Jail? Or a way forward?
Just a few thoughts on this, drawn from a number sources:
I do think that harm reduction is a worthwhile endeavor. By analogy, we may have learned through alcohol prohibition that “bathtub gin” was an even greater menace than regulated sale of alcohol. Certainly the world has changed since the 1930’s and just as technology has made the spread of disinformation easier, the types of drugs on the market today are magnitudes more dangerous.
Nevertheless, harm reduction is a “necessary but not sufficient” strategy. As Dakota Roberts, who works at AIDS Project of Southern Vermont, was quoted in a Vermont Public article:
“We are too stuck on the image that the solution [is] to just have the Narcan there so they don’t die, get them on methadone so they don’t steal,” he said. “And then what? People are still on the street, people are still homeless, people are still cold and hungry and miserable, and feel like there’s no future.”
10 years ago, Gov. Peter Shumlin highlighted the opioid crisis. Has Vermont made any progress?, Vermont Public, January 8, 2024
https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-01-08/vermont-opioid-crisis-peter-shumlin-10-years-later
In the 1970’s in New York State, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s drug laws were combined with institutionalized Narcotics Abuse Control Commission (NACC) facilities. My personal recollection is that correctional officers in State facilities that were turned over to the Narcotic Addiction and Control Commission merely swapped out gray uniforms for white ones. One analysis concluded:
Although the NACC eagerly promoted itself and published information on seeking entry into its treatment program, it was never explicit on how the treatment they provided would lead to rehabilitation and release. The NACC underwent serious scrutiny for its failure to rehabilitate their “clients” and for having no impact on reducing street crime. Even [Gov. Nelson] Rockefeller admitted, “We have achieved very little permanent rehabilitation, and have found no cure.” Declared too costly and ineffective, the NACC was disbanded 1973.
“Bayview Rehabilitation Center | NACC and the Rockefeller Drug Laws,” Prison Public Memory, May 23, 2016
https://prisonpublicmemory.us/nacc-rockefeller-drug-laws/
Still, I keep coming back to the kernels of truth in this talk by the late Fr. Joseph Martin (forgiving the bad analogy used!). See the clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7T5stQQFQg&t=3693s
Simply calling for incarceration is not a solution. I’ll end with a recollection from my past work. About 30 years ago I met an individual who had been incarcerated for theft. He told me, “When Judge Keegan told me to go back to the bullpen, I was going to jail, I cried. But when I got here, I found it’s not so bad, all my friends are here.” It appears from a review of recent Corrections records that he found a few friends there, having been discharged at maximum expiration in 2017 as a second felony offender.
I think these examples show that we need a holistic and balanced approach.
And as David Blistein recently called for: involve those most impacted in the discussion.
Give “Them” a Seat at the Table., August 17, 2024
https://davidblistein.substack.com/p/give-them-a-seat-at-the-table
We're all talking about a few different things.
I agree broadly with many of the earlier comments, but it seems we’re getting at a few orthogonal issues.
Will arrests and jail time get people off drugs? Maybe, but most likely not.
Will arrests and jail time make mentally ill people better? Definitely not.
Will arrests and jail time deter crime? Maybe, if the arrest comes shortly after the crime, but likely not.
I’d add another question: does keeping people doing bad behavior physically separated from others reduce bad behavior? Yes! The uncomfortable reality is that there are certain people who are just not compatible with a functioning, safe community. A small number of people are just psychopaths who hurt others. (Like it or not, many core personality traits are highly heritable.) Others’ brains are so fried from poverty, trauma, addiction, or mental illness that they’re never going to be able to walk the straight and narrow.
We need to help those people, especially if there’s a real possibility they can get better. I’d bet arresting them wouldn’t help with that. But we also need to make sure our neighborhoods are safe and free from really extreme antisocial behavior.
We hear “you can’t arrest your way out of this problem”, and that’s true. But you can jail your way out of it. The recent presentations at the selectboard meetings – which are broadly in line with the rest of the country – show that a small number of people are responsible for most of the fucked-up behavior downtown. Physically removing them – to jail, a mental institution, or anywhere else – would instantly drop the crime rate and improve the feeling downtown.
I’ve posted this before, but it’s worth repeating: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-call-that-compassion
“For reasons that I find impossible to understand, just utterly senseless, many progressives have decided that forcing help on the homeless and the sick is a worse outcome than simply letting them die. And letting them die is exactly what we’re doing.”