Study: Medical Cannabis Access Associated with Fewer Workers’ Comp Claims – Another good reason to legalize! – kra
Read this and then open the Study to learn of lower absenteeism and other workplace benefits where Pot is legal!
Excerpts from the Article:
The enactment of state-specific medical cannabis access laws is associated with a decline in workers’ compensation claims, according to data published in the journal Health Economics.
A team of researchers affiliated with Temple University in Pennsylvania and the University of Cincinnati in Ohio assessed the relationship between medical marijuana legalization laws and workers’ compensation claims over a 23-year period.
Authors reported that legal cannabis access was associated with a nearly seven percent decline in workers’ compensation claims. “Post MML, workers’ compensation claiming declines, both the propensity to claim and the level of income from workers’ comp,” authors determined. “These findings suggest that medical marijuana can allow workers to better manage symptoms associated with workplace injuries and illnesses and, in turn, reduce need for workers’ compensation.”
They concluded: “Our findings add to the small, but growing, literature on the effects of MMLs on labor market outcomes. On net, the available findings suggest that MML passage may increase work capacity among older adults, reduce work absences, improve workplace safety, and reduce WC (workers’ compensation) claiming and the pain and suffering associated with workplace injuries.”
Full text of the study, “Medical marijuana and workers’ compensation claiming,” appears in Health Economics. Additional information is available in the NORML fact-sheet, “Marijuana Legalization and Impact on the Workplace,”.
The Whole Story and OTHER WORKPLACE BENEFITS WHERE POT IS LEGAL!
A CASE STUDY IN HOPE LESSONS FROM OAKLAND’S REMARKABLE REDUCTION IN GUN VIOLENCE – EXCELLENT 107 PAGE REPORT – KRA
This is FANTASTIC good news! Time to get serious about gun control! If you ARE a gun control activist, READ THIS ARTICLE … it will help you.
Excerpts from the Article:
“The good news is that, as this series of reports has shown, urban gun violence is preventable. Just ask the residents of Oakland, California, long considered to be among the most dangerous cities in America—where shootings and homicides are down almost 50% since 2012.”
Giffords Law Center, Faith in Action, and the Black and Brown Gun Violence Prevention Consortium are proud to present A Case Study in Hope: Lessons from Oakland’s Remarkable Reduction in Gun Violence, the third installment in our series of reports on tackling the gun violence crisis in our cities.
Interpersonal gun violence in the United States has been steadily climbing for the past two decades. In 2017, more than 14,500 Americans were victims of gun
homicide, and tens of thousands more were injured in a shooting. This is unacceptable.
Nowhere is this public health epidemic more evident than in our cities, particularly in underserved communities of color. Truly making our nation safer requires
addressing this violence head-on. The good news is that, as this series of reports has shown, urban gun violence is preventable. Just ask the residents of Oakland, California, long considered to be among the most dangerous cities in America—where shootings and homicides
are down almost 50% since 2012.
This tremendous progress didn’t happen spontaneously. It was the result of hard work and careful planning, collaboration among a wide range of stakeholders, and most of all, hope. A Case Study in Hope tells the remarkable story of Oakland’s long struggle to reduce gun violence and identifies key takeaways for cities around the country facing this epidemic.
As Oakland partners have learned, reducing shootings requires true collaboration between community members, law enforcement officers, and city leaders working in concert to intervene with the small population of those at highest risk for engaging in serious violence.
A Case Study in Hope lays out in detail the steps Oakland took to get to this point and presents best practices for other cities to learn from this encouraging success. By scaling up strategies like these, we can build the safer, healthier communities that all Americans deserve.
I simply do not have time to read all of this excellent 107 page report, but here it is!
Letter to the Editor – “Guts and Glory” to Mitt! – 2/6/20
I post this here and send out the Letter because it is important for everyone involved in the criminal justice system to have integrity, be honest, have courage! Too many, instead, are self-serving, greedy, cowards with no moral compass!
Letter to the Editor – “Guts and Glory” to Mitt! – 2/6/20
Every one of those Senators took an oath – made a promise to you and to the nation – to decide IMPEACHMENT in an honest way, impartially, based on the facts. And Mitt Romney is the ONLY Republican who did!
Surely a modern re-write of Profiles in Courage would include Mitt Romney.
READ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/02/romney-impeach-trump/606127/ Romney Votes “Guilty”
Ken Abraham, former prosecutor, founder of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE, Dover, DE 302–423-4067
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I get lots of letters published, and ghost write for others. THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO REACH THOUSANDS OF READERS! The keys to getting your Letter published are:
1. Keep it to 250 words or fewer.
2. Do not make it about “poor little old me”. Describe the problem as one which not only affects the individual, but is a senseless or ineffective measure, policy, or law which also harms communities and society. For example, with reentry, the obstacles make it unnecessarily difficult for the individual, but also harm society by making it hard to become productive, spending money and paying taxes in the community, and they cause increased recidivism = increased crime.
3. Speak from your heart.
4. Google any facts you are not sure about.
5. Do not name-call.
Do what works: Write that Letter!
…………
Letter to Editor – sign name, town, state, and your phone number (they often call to verify that you sent it), and “Member of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE” if you like – shows you are part of a large group.
Send the email to yourself, and put on the “bcc” bar the email addresses for Letters to the Editor for the top ten newspapers in your state and several national ones – The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, U S A Today (google the Letter to Editor email addresses). Any questions, CALL me at 302-423-4067!
GOOGLE THE EMAIL ADDRESSES FOR “LETTERS TO THE EDITOR” FOR THE TOP TEN NEWSPAPERS IN YOUR STATE AND SAVE THAT INFORMATION FOR REPEATED USE – Some papers will print a letter from you every 2 ekke, some every 30 days, some every 90 days. They have varying policies. But if you really want to make a difference shoot them a new letter once a month! I send one out every 2 weeks.
Need a Letter on some criminal justice issue and not a great letter writer? NO EXCUSE! Email me a rough draft and call me and I’ll polish it up! kenabraham3138@gmail.com .
ANY QUESTIONS, CALL ME AT 302-423-4067.
Gov. Hogan Calls Crime an ‘Urgent Crisis’ in Baltimore
No one governor can end the “war on drugs”, but ALL should call for its end. Any cop can tell you that at least 85% of ALL crime is drug related!
This is not rocket science; it is about dumbass politicians standing up to those lobbying them against constructive changes: Prison guard unions, police unions, private prisons and the dozens of companies that serve them, and scores of others, making money on the status quo!
Excerpts from the Article:
Gov. Larry Hogan called for decisive action to fight “out-of-control violent crime” he said is “destroying Baltimore” in his annual State of the State address Wednesday to the Maryland General Assembly. From a boy shot in the stomach while riding in a car with his family on a Saturday morning to a grandmother killed in gang crossfire last month, Hogan cited examples to emphasize the toll crime is taking and the need for action.
“This is an urgent crisis, and we have an obligation to do something about it right now,” Hogan said. “There can be no more excuses and no more delays.” Baltimore had 348 homicides last year — the fifth straight year of more than 300 killings — making it the city’s most violent year ever per capita. Last month, 12 people were shot, five of them fatally, in eight separate weekend shootings.
The governor, as well as lawmakers from both parties, have proposed packages of legislation to try to address the problem.
Hogan has proposed tougher penalties for witness intimidation and for people who use guns to commit violent crimes. He’s calling for stronger penalties for people who possess stolen firearms and guns with obliterated serial numbers, as well as for people who possess or supply illegal guns to violent criminals.
Democrats, who control the legislature, proposed a package of their own Tuesday. Sen. Melony Griffith, a Prince George’s County Democrat who gave a response to the governor’s speech, said the plan seeks to fight crime and its root causes, including the closing loopholes in the law related to illegal firearms.
“We know there’s no single solution to this complex issue, but there are steps that we can take to implement thoughtful and comprehensive approaches to addressing crime,” Griffith said. Del. Luke Clippinger, a Baltimore Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said he did not believe simply raising penalties would be enough. He noted that the state increased penalties in 2018 for repeat violent offenders.
“We apparently don’t talk about that very much anymore, because we’ve gotten no evidence at all that that actually did anything,” Clippinger said. “We need to look at the bigger picture.”
Lawmakers say the severity of the problem demands a bipartisan response. “It has to be, because it’s not just Baltimore city anymore,” said Sen. Stephen Hershey, an Eastern Shore Republican who is the Senate minority whip. ”It’s spreading out to the neighboring counties. It has to be something that is addressed by both sides.”
Homicides jumped about 85% in Baltimore County last year compared to the prior year, from 27 to 50.
The Whole Story:
Why is this here? Because tRump is as bad for our justice system as he is for the rest of my America!
Why is this here? Because tRump is as bad for our justice system as he is for the rest of my America!
These cruel, racist, spineless traitors must GO!
READ Can’t you see how serious this is?!
WAKE UP, PEOPLE! YOU ARE THE WHALE! 🙂 ACT! = https://lnkd.in/dFNhiFg
I do my patriotic duty by providing this information. PLEASE DO YOURS BY TAKING A MOMENT TO SHARE THIS POST! If we don’t ACT, these cruel, scumbags will crawl into office again! 🙁 🙁
If you have not read my article you should, and then …. it is just a couple of clicks … SHARE IT!
Restore my AMERICA! Bernie, Biden, Bloomberg, Warren, whoever it is, be sure you are registered and then VOTE! THANKS.
Sentencing reform debate shines light on lack of substance abuse treatment in prisons
Good. This is another wildly dysfunctional part of the system. I know from my many contacts, my readings, and my own experience, that virtually NONE of the prison run programs are effective! The private companies submit a bid of 13 million $$$, or 40 million$$$, … to provide a treatment program. The program looks good on paper, the contractor gets the big bucks, …. and the difference between what is on the proposal and what goes on in the prisons makes the Grand Canyon look like a crack in the sidewalk! The “classes” are just bullshit sessions. They should have some empirical way to know which ones WORK!
Excerpts from the Article:
Lawmakers’ ongoing discussions about sentencing reform have turned a spotlight on substance abuse treatment in Arizona prisons, and the stark lack of options for the more than three quarters of inmates who have addiction issues.
The Arizona Department of Corrections says 78 percent of the inmates in its custody have a history of substance abuse at the time they’re admitted into prison. But less than 4 percent of all inmates who spent time in Arizona prisons in fiscal year 2019 received treatment while behind bars.
At the end of November, 933 inmates were enrolled in substance abuse programming. That accounted for about 2.2 percent of the total inmate population of 42,562. Department spokesman Bill Lamoreaux emphasized that that figure is just a snapshot of enrollment, and doesn’t account for people who have completed treatment but are still incarcerated.
Of the 60,272 inmates who saw the inside of a state correctional facility during the last fiscal year, only 2,299, or about 3.8 percent of the year’s total prison population, graduated from substance abuse programs.
The need for treatment exceeds the availability of programming, Lamoreaux said.
Mireles had already done several stints in prison when she was sentenced to five years for property crimes she committed to feed her heroin addiction in 2013. This time, she was committed to getting sober and kicking her 28-year heroin addiction.“Any crime I’ve ever committed has been in regard to getting my fix,” said Mireles, who has now been sober for nearly seven years.
In her five years in Perryville, Mireles sent five letters to prison officials asking to be enrolled in substance abuse treatment. The first four went ignored, she said. Officials finally responded on the fifth try and said she would be placed on a waiting list for a program. But by then, Mireles had less than a year left on her sentence and therefore was ineligible to participate. Mireles’s predicament isn’t uncommon. The Department of Corrections uses a ranking system based on need, risk to recidivate and time remaining on a prison sentence to determine which inmates get enrolled in programming. Inmates who can qualify for an early release by completing substance abuse counseling go to the front of the line. Treatment ranges from 36 hours for people convicted of drunk driving to 12-month “intensive treatment,” according to Lamoreaux.
In August, Karen Hellman, who runs the Department of Corrections’ division for inmate programs, told a legislative committee studying sentencing reform that 13 of her division’s 26 positions for substance abuse treatment counselors were vacant. Lamoreaux told the Arizona Mirror that a recent salary increase has helped fill six vacant positions.
Under Arizona’s “truth in sentencing” law, inmates must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences, but can earn the option to serve the remaining 15 percent on community supervision. A 2019 law lowered the requirement to 70 percent for people who were only convicted of drug offenses, if they complete addiction counseling or other programming. As of late June, 101 inmates were already eligible for early release and nearly 7,400 others could become eligible in the future.
While inmates who are in line for an early release have an obvious need for priority, that may leave other inmates without access to the treatment they need. Inmates with substance abuse problems and long prison sentences often go many years before receiving treatment. Mireles was granted an early release after serving 85 percent of her sentence in exchange for attending 90 days of substance abuse treatment after her release.
Even when treatment is available, it’s not always of the highest caliber. Rebecca Fealk, program coordinator for the Arizona chapter of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that promotes criminal justice reform, has heard many stories from former inmates about treatment that basically consists of, “do this packet and I’ll watch you in the classroom while you complete this packet, which talks about making the right choices or what kind of coping mechanisms would you have so you don’t do drugs again.”
“That’s not actual treatment and counseling. Those are worksheets,” Fealk said.
Donna Hamm, director of the prison reform organization Middle Ground, said treatment sometimes consists of little more than filling out a workbook, and those in need sometimes don’t even get counselor. When they do, she said, “counselor” is often a misnomer. Joe Watson, a former inmate who now works for the American Friends Service Committee, said treatment is often provided not by counselors but by correctional officers who lack training in treating substance abuse issues.
“Our law enforcement agencies are very good at finding out who does what and arresting them for it. But we keep hearing that they end up arresting the same people over and over again because we’re not doing anything to address the underlying issue,” Roberts said.
Gov. Doug Ducey said the state needs money for substance abuse treatment in its prisons. It’s unclear whether he’ll push for more funding in the fiscal year 2021 budget, but said he plans to focus on reducing recidivism.
“Prison … is not the best place for people with mental health issues, often substance abuse issues. Sometimes people are in prison because they’re feeding that addiction. So we are looking at different alternatives in terms of reforms that we can have so that we can give people a second chance and allow them to make a better choice. And substance abuse programs are part of that,” the governor told reporters in December.
Fealk, on the other hand, doesn’t believe the department needs for funding at all. The Department of Corrections has a budget of about $1.1 billion. Rather than give it more, Fealk said the department needs to change the way it spends its money to prioritize things like treatment.
The Whole Story:
Sentencing reform debate shines light on lack of substance abuse treatment in prisons
The Injustice of This Moment Is Not an ‘Aberration’ From mass incarceration to mass deportation, our nation remains in deep denial.
From the woman who sparked a fire with the book , “The New Jim Crow”! I have written several articles on the issues she raises, but I did not correlate the mass deportation to mass incarceration, which, as she points out, is no coincidence.
Excerpts from the Article:
Ten years have passed since my book, “The New Jim Crow,” was published. I wrote it to challenge our nation to reckon with the recurring cycles of racial reform, retrenchment and rebirth of caste-like systems that have defined our racial history since slavery. It has been an astonishing decade. Everything and nothing has changed.
When I was researching and writing the book, Barack Obama had not yet been elected president of the United States. I was in disbelief that our country would actually elect a black man to be the leader of the so-called free world. As the election approached, I felt an odd sense of hope and dread. I hoped against all reason that we would actually do it. But I also knew that, if we did, there would be a price to pay.
Everything I knew through experience and study told me that we as a nation did not fully understand the nature of the moment we were in. We had recently birthed another caste system — a system of mass incarceration — that locked millions of poor people and people of color in literal and virtual cages.
Our nation’s prison and jail population had quintupled in 30 years, leaving us with the highest incarceration rate in the world. A third of black men had a felony record — due in large part to a racially biased, brutal drug war — and were relegated to a permanent second-class status. Tens of millions of people in the United States had been stripped of basic civil and human rights, including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, education and basic public benefits.
Nevertheless, our nation remained in deep denial that a new caste system even existed, and most of us — even those who cared deeply about racial justice — did not seem to understand that powerful racial dynamics and political forces were at play that made much of our racial progress illusory. We had not faced our racial history and could not tell the truth about our racial present, yet growing numbers of Americans wanted to elect a black president and leap into a “colorblind” future.
I was right to worry about the aftermath of Obama’s election. After he was inaugurated, our nation was awash in “post-racialism.” Black History Month events revolved around “how far we’ve come.” Many in the black community and beyond felt that, if Obama could win the presidency, anything was possible. Few people wanted to hear the message I felt desperate to convey: Despite appearances, our nation remains trapped in a cycle of racial reform, backlash and reformation of systems of racial and social control.
Things have changed since then. Donald Trump is president of the United States. For many, this feels like whiplash. After eight years of Barack Obama — a man who embraced the rhetoric (though not the politics) of the civil rights movement — we now have a president who embraces the rhetoric and the politics of white nationalism. This is a president who openly stokes racial animosity and even racial violence, who praises dictators (and likely aspires to be one), who behaves like a petulant toddler on Twitter, and who has a passionate, devoted following of millions of people who proudly say they want to “make America great again” by taking us back to a time that we’ve left behind.
We are now living in an era not of post-racialism but of unabashed racialism, a time when many white Americans feel free to speak openly of their nostalgia for an age when their cultural, political and economic dominance could be taken for granted — no apologies required. Racial bigotry, fearmongering and scapegoating are no longer subterranean in our political discourse; the dog whistles have been replaced by bullhorns. White nationalist movements are operating openly online and in many of our communities; they’re celebrating mass killings and recruiting thousands into their ranks.
White nationalism has been emboldened by our president, who routinely unleashes hostile tirades against black and brown people — calling Mexican migrants criminals, “rapists” and “bad people,” referring to developing African nations as “shithole countries” and smearing a district of the majority-black city of Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Millions of Americans are cheering, or at least tolerating, these racial hostilities.
Contrary to what many people would have us believe, what our nation is experiencing is not an “aberration.” The politics of “Trumpism” and “fake news” are not new; they are as old as the nation itself. The very same playbook has been used over and over in this country by those who seek to preserve racial hierarchy, or to exploit racial resentments and anxieties for political gain, each time with similar results. Back in the 1980s and ’90s, Democratic and Republican politicians leaned heavily on racial stereotypes of “crack heads,” “crack babies,” “superpredators” and “welfare queens” to mobilize public support for the War on Drugs, a get-tough movement and a prison-building boom — a political strategy that was traceable in large part to the desire to appeal to poor and working-class white voters who had defected from the Democratic Party in the wake of the civil rights movement.
Today, the rhetoric has changed, but the game remains the same. Public enemy No. 1 in the 2016 election was a brown-skinned immigrant, an “illegal,” a “terrorist” or a “caravan” full of people who want to take your job, rape your daughter or commit an act of terrorism. As Trump put it: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems. … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Fortunately, a growing number of scholars and activists have begun to connect the dots between mass incarceration and mass deportation in our nation’s history and current politics. The historian Kelly Lytle Hernández, in her essay “Amnesty or Abolition: Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,” chronicles how these systems have emerged as interlocking forms of social control that relegate “aliens” and “felons” to a racialized caste of outsiders. In recent decades, the system of mass incarceration has stripped away from millions of U.S. citizens basic civil and human rights until their status mirrors (or dips below) that of noncitizen immigrants within the United States. This development has coincided with the criminalization of immigration in the United States, resulting in a new class of “illegal immigrants” and “aliens” who are viewed and treated like “felons” or “criminals.” Immigration violations that were once treated as minor civil infractions are now crimes. And minor legal infractions, ranging from shoplifting to marijuana possession to traffic violations, now routinely prompt one of the nation’s most devastating sanctions — deportation.
The story of how our “nation of immigrants” came to deport and incarcerate so many for so little, Hernández explains, is a story of race and unfreedom reaching back to the era of emancipation. If we fail to understand the historical relationship between these systems, especially the racial politics that enabled them, we will be unable to build a truly united front that will prevent the continual re-formation of systems of racial and social control.
As Khalil Gibran Muhammad points out in “The Condemnation of Blackness,” throughout our nation’s history, when crime and immigration have been perceived as white, our nation’s response has been radically different from when those phenomena have been defined as black or brown. The systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation may seem entirely unrelated at first glance, but they are both deeply rooted in our racial history, and they both have expanded in part because of the enormous profits to be made in controlling, exploiting and eliminating vulnerable human beings.
It is tempting to imagine that electing a Democratic president or more Democratic politicians will surely fix the crises in our justice systems and our democracy. To be clear, removing Trump from office is necessary and urgent; but simply electing more Democrats to office is no guarantee that our nation will break its habit of birthing enormous systems of racial and social control. Indeed, one of the lessons of recent decades is these systems can grow and thrive even when our elected leaders claim to be progressive and espouse the rhetoric of equality, inclusion and civil rights.
President Bill Clinton, who publicly aligned himself with the black community and black leaders, escalated a racially discriminatory drug war in part to avoid being cast by conservatives as “soft on crime.” Similarly, President Obama publicly preached values of inclusion and compassion toward immigrants, yet he escalated the mass detention and deportation of noncitizens. Obama claimed that his administration was focused on deporting: “Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.” However, reports by The New York Times and the Marshall Project revealed that, despite Obama’s rhetoric, a clear majority of immigrants detained and deported during his administration had no criminal record, except minor infractions, including traffic violations, and posed no threat.
Equally important is the reality that “felons” have families. And “criminals” are often children or teenagers. The notion that, if you’ve ever committed a crime, you’re permanently disposable is the very idea that has rationalized mass incarceration in the United States.
None of this is to minimize the real progress that has occurred on many issues of race and criminal justice during the past decade. Today, there is bipartisan support for some prison downsizing, and hundreds of millions of philanthropic dollars have begun to flow toward criminal justice reform. A vibrant movement led by formerly incarcerated and convicted people is on the rise — a movement that has challenged or repealed disenfranchisement laws in several states, mobilized in support of sentencing reform and successfully organized to “ban the box” on employment applications that discriminate against those with criminal records by asking the dreaded question: “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” Activism challenging police violence has swept the nation — inspired by the courageous uprisings in Ferguson, Mo., the viral videos of police killings of unarmed black people, and #BlackLivesMatter. Promising movements for restorative and transformative justice have taken hold in numerous cities. Campaigns against cash bail have gained steam. Marijuana legalization has sped across the nation, with more than 25 states having partly or fully decriminalized cannabis since 2012. And “The New Jim Crow,” which some predicted would never get an audience, wound up spending nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and has been used widely by faith groups, activists, educators and people directly effected by mass incarceration inside and outside prisons. Over the past 10 years, I’ve received thousands of letters — and tens of thousands of emails — from people in all walks of life who have written to share how the book changed their lives or how they have used it to support consciousness-raising or activism in countless ways.
Everything has changed. And yet nothing has.
The politics of white supremacy, which defined our original constitution, have continued unabated — repeatedly and predictably engendering new systems of racial and social control. Just a few decades ago, politicians vowed to build more prison walls. Today, they promise border walls.
The political strategy of divide, demonize and conquer has worked for centuries in the United States — since the days of slavery — to keep poor and working people angry at (and fearful of) one another rather than uniting to challenge unjust political and economic systems. At times, the tactics of white supremacy have led to open warfare. Other times, the divisions and conflicts are less visible, lurking beneath the surface. The stakes now are as high as they’ve ever been. Nearly everyone seems aware that our democracy is in crisis, yet few seem prepared to reckon with the reality that removing Trump from office will not rid our nation of the social and political dynamics that made his election possible. No issue has proved more vexing to this nation than the issue of race, and yet no question is more pressing than how to overcome the politics of white supremacy — a form of politics that not only led to an actual civil war but that threatens our ability ever to create a truly fair, just and inclusive democracy.
We find ourselves in this dangerous place not because something radically different has occurred in our nation’s politics, but because so much has remained the same.
The inconvenient truth is that racial progress in this country is always more complex and frequently more illusory than appears at first glance. The past 10 years has been a case in point. Our nation has swung sharply from what Marc Mauer memorably termed “a race to incarcerate” — propelled by bipartisan wars on “drugs” and “crime” — to a bipartisan commitment to criminal justice reform, particularly in the area of drug policy. And yet, it must be acknowledged that much of the progress occurred not because of newfound concern for people of color who have been the primary targets of the drug war, but because drug addiction, due to the opioid crisis, became perceived as a white problem and wealthy white investors became interested in profiting from the emerging legal cannabis industry.
Some of the reversals in political opinion have been quite striking. For example, John Boehner, a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, stated in 2011 that he was “unalterably opposed to decriminalizing marijuana” but by the spring of 2018 he had joined the board of a cannabis company.
Growing sympathy for illegal drug users among whites and conservatives, and concern regarding the expense of mass imprisonment, helped to make possible a bipartisan consensus in support of the Trump administration’s First Step Act — leading to the early release of more than 3,000 people from federal prisons for drug offenses. This development, which benefits people of color subject to harsh and biased drug sentencing laws, is difficult to characterize as major progress toward ending mass incarceration given that Trump continued to unleash racially hostile tirades against communities of color and his administration vowed to reinstate the federal death penalty. He also rescinded a number of significant reforms adopted by Obama and expanded the use of private prisons.
Most troubling, the modest criminal justice reforms that were achieved during the Obama administration coincided with the expansion of the system of mass deportation. Although the administration agreed to phase out federal contracts for private prisons, it made enormous investments in private detention centers for immigrants, including the granting of a $1 billion contract to Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest prison company, to build a detention facility for women and children asylum seekers from Central America. Immigrant detention centers were exempted from the phaseout plan for private prisons, which meant that only about a quarter of the population held in U.S. private facilities was affected by the plan. The caging of immigrants for profit was allowed to continue without restraint.
Many of us saw these presidents as “good people” with our best interests at heart, doing what they could to navigate a political environment in which only limited justice is possible. All of these factors played a role, but one was key: These systems grew with relatively little political resistance because people of all colors were willing to tolerate the disposal of millions of individuals once they had been labeled criminals in the media and political discourse. This painful reality suggests that ending our nation’s habit of creating enormous systems of racial and social control requires us to expand our sphere of moral concern so widely that none of us, not even those branded criminals, can be viewed or treated as disposable.
If there is any silver lining to be found in the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, it is that millions of people have been inspired to demonstrate solidarity on a large scale across the lines of gender, race, religion and class in defense of those who have been demonized and targeted for elimination. Trump’s blatant racial demagogy has awakened many from their “colorblind” slumber and spurred collective action to oppose the Muslim ban and the border wall, and to create sanctuaries for immigrants in their places of worship and local communities.
Many who are engaged in this work are also deeply involved in, or supportive of, movements to end police violence and mass incarceration. Growing numbers of people are beginning to see how the politics of white supremacy have resurfaced again and again, leading to the creation and maintenance of new systems of racial and social control. A politics of deep solidarity is beginning to emerge — the only form of politics that holds any hope for our collective liberation. The centuries-long struggle to birth a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy — a nation in which every voice and every life truly matters — did not begin with us and it will not end with us. The struggle is as old as the nation itself and the birth process has been painful, to say the least. My greatest hope and prayer is that we will serve as faithful midwives in our lifetimes and do what we can to make America, finally, what it must become.
The Whole Story
12 shot, five dead in single day of shootings in Baltimore – With Letter to Editor -kra
The violence is crazy! See the Letter I sent out to Baltimore papers and others! There IS a solution!
Excerpts from the Article:
Authorities say 12 people were shot, five of them fatally, in eight separate weekend shootings in Baltimore.
The first of Saturday’s shootings was reported at about 2:30 a.m. and involved three female victims, all found with apparent gunshot wounds in a car in a northeastern section of the city. One victim, a 28-year-old woman, died shortly after arriving at a hospital. A few hours later, police responding to a shooting in southeast Baltimore found a 46-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the leg. Then, a second shooting victim, a 40-year-old man, walked into a hospital seeking treatment for a gunshot wound to his leg.
Shortly after 2:30 p.m. Saturday, police found a man fatally shot in southeast Baltimore. That was followed less than half an hour later by a shooting in central Baltimore that left a 37-year-old man wounded. A 38-year-old man was found with a gunshot wound around 7 p.m. Saturday in northeast Baltimore. A shooting in southwest Baltimore about an hour later left one man wounded and another dead. More gunfire a few minutes later in northeast Baltimore left a 37-year-old man fatally wounded.
Saturday’s violence ended shortly before 11 p.m., when officers found a 24-year-old man fatally wounded in northwest Baltimore.
The city recorded 348 homicides last year, its fifth consecutive year with more than 300 murders and the most violent year ever on a per-capita basis.
City council president Brandon Scott, a Democrat running for mayor, issued a statement Sunday condemning the violence. “A day that should have been met with pride and community was once again flooded with violence and loss,” Scott wrote, an apparent reference to an NFL divisional playoff game hosted by the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday night.
“This violence is heartbreaking and must stop now,” added Scott, who said he plans to question Baltimore’s police commissioner and other agency heads about what they were doing in the affected communities before and after the shootings.
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Letter to the Editor or Op Ed Submission– WHY Shootings are the Norm! –1/13/20
In many neighborhoods in America, shootings are the norm, violence is endemic. In my home state, Delaware, not a month goes by without reading about some new “Task Force”, “Forum”, “Committee” or the like to discuss this awful problem. With headlines like one 2 inches high saying “Anguished mother asks: “Who’s next?”, we can feel her pain. Baltimore just had 12 shot, 5 dead, in one day!
Why is it a problem? There are several reasons, but I identify two major ones in this Letter. One – and this is a drum I have been beating for years – is our utterly failed “war on drugs”! Alcohol did not create Al Capone, prohibition created Al Capone. And so it is with drugs.
Criminalizing drug possession the way we do only drives this very lucrative business into the hands of street hoodlums, gangsters, drug kingpins, and organized crime. Just look at places where drugs are not criminalized and you will see dramatically less crime and less violence!
Here is another big reason why: for decades we have been violent against non-violent people! Millions of Americans have seen and experienced this violence … called Prison Abuse! They were imprisoned for non-violent offenses, only to be brutalized by the system.
Of course no one city, nor one state, can end our prison abuse or our totally failed “war on drugs”, but more politicians, lawmakers, and citizens concerned with the terrible violence – our youngsters shot on the streets daily –should call for such measures if they want to stop the violence!
Read articles on the website of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE. They explain how we have been sooooo stupid, spawning this violence. We need to stop talking and get results which lessen the violence.
The difficulty is that the criminal justice system thrives on the status quo; for every one person arrested, 29 people profit! Cops, prison guards, prosecutors, all the support staff and contractors serving, for example, D O C. These groups spend billions of dollars lobbying against needed changes, yet most of them are really helping nobody – not individuals, not society.
For too many people, the issue is not about “what is the real solution”, it is “what will save my job”! The people must take charge and demand changes.
Ken Abraham, former Deputy Attorney General, founder of Citizens for Criminal Justice, Dover, DE 302-423-4067
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I get lots of letters published, and ghost write for others. THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO REACH THOUSANDS OF READERS! The keys to getting your Letter published are:
1. Keep it to 250 words or fewer.
2. Do not make it about “poor little old me”. Describe the problem as one which not only affects the individual, but is a senseless or ineffective measure, policy, or law which also harms communities and society. For example, with reentry, the obstacles make it unnecessarily difficult for the individual, but also harm society by making it hard to become productive, spending money and paying taxes in the community, and they cause increased recidivism = increased crime.
3. Speak from your heart.
4. Google any facts you are not sure about.
5. Do not name-call.
Do what works: Write that Letter!
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Letter to Editor – sign name, town, state, and your phone number (they often call to verify that you sent it), and “Member of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE” if you like – shows you are part of a large group.
Send the email to yourself, and put on the “bcc” bar the email addresses for Letters to the Editor for the top ten newspapers in your state and several national ones – The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, U S A Today (google the Letter to Editor email addresses). Any questions, CALL me at 302-423-4067!
GOOGLE THE EMAIL ADDRESSES FOR “LETTERS TO THE EDITOR” FOR THE TOP TEN NEWSPAPERS IN YOUR STATE AND SAVE THAT INFORMATION FOR REPEATED USE – Some papers will print a letter from you every 2 ekke, some every 30 days, some every 90 days. They have varying policies. But if you really want to make a difference shoot them a new letter once a month! I send one out every 2 weeks.
Need a Letter on some criminal justice issue and not a great letter writer? NO EXCUSE! Email me a rough draft and call me and I’ll polish it up! kenabraham3138@gmail.com .
ANY QUESTIONS, CALL ME AT 302-423-4067.
We have an active addict in our White House! It’s True, Folks – kra
In the glaring lights accompanying TV cameras, one’s pupils become constricted, not dilated … unless you are high on something! While some experts say that STDs may be the cause for some of tRump’s dysfunction, this too must account for some of it!
What I want to know is: where are the “deadly side effects” I am praying for !?!
Excerpts from the Article:
Donald Trump takes high dosages of Adderall orally and through snorting up his nostrils on a daily basis. Here are some of the side effects experienced by Adderall addicts:
“Adderall is a potent stimulant, and it can be hard to recognize when someone is abusing the drug. People often abuse Adderall to enhance alertness and productivity. They are often motivated individuals that don’t look like a stereotypical drug user.”
Telltale signs of Adderall abuse may include:
Being overly talkative CHECK
Loss of appetite NEGATIVE
Unusual excitability CHECK
Social withdrawal UNCERTAIN
Financial troubles CHECK
Aggression CHECK
Sleeping for long periods of time UNCERTAIN
Secretive behavior CHECK
Memory loss CHECK
Incomplete thoughts CHECK
Relationship problems CHECK
Disorientation CHECK
Mania CHECK
Impulsive behaviors CHECK
Adderall is a strong stimulant that can lead to serious — and potentially deadly — side effects. Overdose is one of the worst side effects of Adderall abuse, which can lead to heart attack, stroke and liver failure. Taking Adderall with other substances, such as alcohol, heighten the risk of a fatal overdose.
Snorting Adderall is common among users looking for immediate effects. They crush up their pills into a fine powder, sniffing Adderall into their sinus cavity. This often leads to a more intense high, but snorting Adderall comes with its own side effects.
Some of the side effects of Adderall abuse may include:
Convulsions
Paranoia
Irregular heartbeat
Loss of appetite
Nausea
Insomnia
Hallucinations
Sexual dysfunction
26 bags of body parts found in western Mexico ravine – END our asinine “war on drugs” – kra
THIS is what our “war on drugs” “accomplishes”, while drugs flood our streets with ever-increasing deadliness! Yes, this article is about Mexico, but not long ago bags with body parts were unearthed in the desert in AZ = the U S of A!
Irrespective of where they are, each is a Mother’s son or daughter!
HERE is the solution, Folks! READ IT! The Answer to the Drug Problem … or do you want to continue to waste about a hundred billion dollars a year, and get nowhere?
Excerpts from the Article:
Forensics officials in the western Mexican state of Jalisco are trying to determine how many victims are accounted for in 26 plastic bags of body parts found in a ravine this week, authorities said Thursday.
The Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it began to collect the bags Tuesday in the municipality of Tonala on the outskirts of Guadalajara. Officials initially recovered 14 bags of body parts. They returned Wednesday and found 12 more.
The remains were taken to the state forensic science institute for identification.
The area has experienced increased violence and disappearances in recent years as the Jalisco New Generation cartel grew in strength. Authorities have not suggested who may be responsible.
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430 Kings Hwy
Ste 414
Dover DE 19901
302.423.4067
