Here’s an arresting fact -- pardon the pun -- about Michigan’s prison system. Phil Power of the Center for Michigan tells me that our state spends about $1.9 billion a year on corrections.
That includes what it costs to lock up or otherwise service the current total of 125,000 people behind bars, on parole or out on probation. That’s also just about the same amount the state spends on our system of community colleges and universities.
All told, those schools have about 300,000 students. That means we are spending roughly three times as much on each person who has been convicted of a crime as we are on each of the students who are, hopefully, Michigan’s future.
Does that indicate screwed-up priorities or what?
Michigan has far more inmates behind bars -- something like 40 percent more -- than surrounding states. Why? No mystery at all. Back in the 1970s, we decided to tackle the drug problem by locking up small-time dealers and throwing the key away.
Gov. William Milliken, one of the best public servants I have ever known, was caught up in all this. He signed a bill that created some of the nation’s harshest mandatory minimum penalties for drug crimes. The bill was called the 650-lifer law, after the weight in grams of heroin or cocaine it takes to put you away forever.
Since then, Milliken has told me several times that he deeply regrets signing that, and considers the law and the policy a terrible mistake. Such anti-drug laws didn’t do much to stem the flow of drugs, but they did succeed in overflowing Michigan prison populations. Today, there are four times the number of people behind bars in our state than there were twenty-five years ago.
Milliken has repeatedly urged lawmakers to repeal these mandatory sentencing bills. While they indeed have been modified a bit in recent years, harsh sentencing in drug cases is still common.
What is happening now is that the prisons and county and city lockups are filling up, and because of overcrowding at all levels, inmates are getting released earlier and earlier.
This has now led to the ultimate irony. An Ann Arbor district judge reports that two prisoners convicted of drunk driving have asked to be sent to jail rather than probation. The drunks calculated that jail now involves less time and less hassle.
Something is clearly radically wrong, and that, together with the state’s budget crisis, ought to be a good wake-up call.
Michigan needs to figure out a way to stop crime. Michigan also needs to decide if we can afford the luxury of continuing to senselessly warehouse tens of thousands of criminals.
All the evidence indicates we are spending a vast amount of money to neither deter nor reform the vast majority of these inmates.
There has to be a better way, and as a matter of fact, there is.
Now, we just have to agree to do something about it.
We will never appropriately address the drug epidemic in the USA. For the same reason, we don't want to address the welfare of our greatest comodity- children. There is no fame and glory in it. To stop a drug problem gets us to normalcy. Not fame. To get young children eating properly, bathing daily, dressing with clean clothes for school, reading at home, preparing homework, reporting for school on time after sleeping all night, and eating a healthy breakfast is all normal. No glory. We could however, treat drug users as abnormal people, which is what they are. First offense, i.e. possession of user quantity- 30 days in-patient treatment with no contact with the outside, with the exception of a one minute informational call to a homey. Second possession- 60 days. As in progressive discipline. Next possession- 90 days. Government provides a closed hospital, or warehouse for housing. Nothing elaborate. Not a prison, no guards, just treatment, counseling, and planning for the future. NO exceptions.
Good luck.
The Dr.
Posted by: Dr Wills | January 31, 2007 at 10:58 AM
We will never appropriately address the drug epidemic in the USA. For the same reason, we don't want to address the welfare of our greatest comodity- children. There is no fame and glory in it. To stop a drug problem gets us to normalcy. Not fame. To get young children eating properly, bathing daily, dressing with clean clothes for school, reading at home, preparing homework, reporting for school on time after sleeping all night, and eating a healthy breakfast is all normal. No glory. We could however, treat drug users as abnormal people, which is what they are. First offense, i.e. possession of user quantity- 30 days in-patient treatment with no contact with the outside, with the exception of a one minute informational call to a homey. Second possession- 60 days. As in progressive discipline. Next possession- 90 days. Government provides a closed hospital, or warehouse for housing. Nothing elaborate. Not a prison, no guards, just treatment, counseling, and planning for the future. NO exceptions.
Good luck.
The Dr.
Posted by: Dr Wills | January 31, 2007 at 10:59 AM
True there have been some more pressing issues than drugs facing America over the past 5 years, but to say that there is no "fame" in addressing drug issues is outragous. There have been few more glamorous topics of disscusion for the right over the past 25 years then the war waged on drugs by President Fame himself (Reagan), or at least that's what my homies tell me.
Posted by: Dr. Homey | January 31, 2007 at 02:37 PM