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BUILDING NEW PRISONS FOR DRUG CRIMES LIKE BUILDING
CEMETERIES FOR CANCER, JUDGE SAYS
All day conference brings together diverse fields in look at youth in
trouble.
"I made a mistake," Brenda Olive stated. "I made a wrong choice, I
know. I tried to sell drugs to make money." She paused to wipe tears
from her cheeks. "I was not a drug user. Most people think that people
who go to prison are bad people. I'm one of those people they call bad
people."
Speaking to an audience of over eighty people, Ms. Olive related her
story as part of a day long conference sponsored by the Drug Policy
Education Group, Inc. Featuring a host of speakers who addressed a wide
variety of topics related to at-risk youth in the state, "Arkansas Youth
in Trouble: What Works, What's Needed, and Where's the Money?" brought
together school counselors, social workers, educators, medical
professionals, and youth advocates for interactive sessions all day
Saturday November 18 at the Riverfront Hilton in North Little Rock.
"I always thought families were something that happened," Brenda
Olive continued. "I never found one of those. I've been on a journey,
looking for family. I was given away at two months to a lady who was
very abusive. I married, had children, divorced and remarried and had
another set of children. With the second set of children, my husband was
an alcoholic and became very ill. A few months after became ill, I found
out my nine year old child had cancer.
"So I went along on this journey, looking for family. In 1982 they
told me there was nothing else they could do for either one. I took a
leave of absence from my job and took care of my daughter at home. My
husband died and my daughter died a month later. I was about to lose the
house and everything was sold.
"I made a wrong choice. I sold some drugs and went to prison. I was
there seven months... I had a 17-year-old who went to Central. She stood
in for me. Six years later, after we were in counseling, I found out
what had happened while I was gone. One had been sexually abused. One
had had an abortion. One had been beaten. All this came out when I was
already feeling bad that I had made wrong choices.
"So what do I do? I tried apologizing, I tried everything, still my
son continued to get into trouble. I feel like he was seeking some kind
of help which at that time I didn't understand. The journey
continued. Now I'm raising one of his children. He's incarcerated.
"I feel like there is a breakdown in the system -- when you've been
to prison, when you've been what society calls a bad person, you can't
work -- Right now, I have not made wrong choices. I became disabled.
I've lost another house. But this time, I've just lost.
"I've had people call me who've been free and had no crime since the
70s, and a background check is done and they lose their job. I think
there should be some type of cut off point that if you get out of prison
and stay crime free five to ten years, something should be done when you
have proved yourself.
"Where society has bad people right now is, you can't get work, you
can't get welfare, you can't get housing. What do we do?"
Citing Arkansas' welfare reform as one of the harshest in the nation,
the following speaker, Dee Ann Newell, commented on the "outrageous"
treatment of the state's disenfranchised populations.
"Two million people incarcerated in this country, making us history's
greatest jailer ever for mankind... In 1991 when we started our prison
programs through the Centers (the Centers for Families and Children), we
had about 200 women in the Pine Bluff unit. Then in 1994, they moved the
women to Tucker because there were too many, over 400. In 1998, we moved
the women to Newport, to the first for-profit prison in our state.
And there are 685 beds at that unit. Then there are another 250 women
backed up in our jails waiting for openings at the prison.
Ms. Newell makes weekly visits to three prisons in the state, working
under a Rockefeller grant which supports her work with incarcerated
parents and their children. She stated that part of the problem is the
failed war on drugs.
"Eighty percent of all women in prison are mothers of minor children.
In the state of Arkansas, the average age of these children is six
years. The average age of the mothers is 29. Seventy percent of women in
prison are there on either direct drug charges or drug related crimes
like hot checks," Newell said.
"We stiffened the penalties for these crimes so much that some of
these women are serving an average of 49 months. Right now there's a
woman -- first time offender -- hot check charge -- and she got five
years.
"In the name of the public, we have harshened these sentences. At the
same time, the public is going to pay. It costs money to house people in
prison, but beyond that there is a hidden cost, which is the cost these
children are paying.
"The children of incarcerated parents -- these are the children who
are most vulnerable to get into trouble, to go to prison -- they carry a
five times greater risk factor than all other groups of children.
"When we look at incarcerated women, we see women who are
disproportionately women of color, women of poverty with an average
household income of less than $500. We see women of addiction. These are
women of low educational attainment. Most of these women report a
childhood history of sexual and physical abuse, and an adult history of
being a victim of domestic violence."
Ms. Newell's comments ended with a call to action for citizens and
legislators to impose a moratorium on new prison construction in the
state, a theme picked up during the luncheon address by guest speaker
Wendell Griffen, Justice of the Arkansas Court of Appeals and Pastor at
Emmanuel Baptist Church of Little Rock.
"When you send a woman to prison who has children," Judge Griffen
stated, "you are increasing the problem exponentially." "Let's be
honest. Prevailing views on drug policy are based in denial... focused
on the dismal. Our policies are disjointed, drug users versus the rest
of us. And our thinking leads to defeatism, using language such as "war
on drugs." If you define the war by how much drugs you're keeping out
and drugs are still coming in, you lose the war. Defeat. If you talk
about how many people you stop from using drugs and people are still
using drugs, that's defeat. Everybody's thinking about drug policy is
what hasn't work, what isn't working, and how bad off things are.
"I would like us to think outside the box, do some hopeful thinking
about drug policy. I would suggest that we begin thinking about drug
policy wholistically -- or holistically if you want. People have
issues about income, education, fulfillment...
"We've treated symptoms with our policies. We've treated drug
addiction with incarceration. We haven't cured addicts.
"Hopeful thinking needs to be redemptive. Much of our thinking has
been punitive. We empower enforcement instead of rehabilitation. Surely
we have learned by now that punitive approaches are not working.
"Current overcrowding in our prisons gives us the opportunity to
think that maybe we don't need to build any more prisons to house drug
users. It's not stopping anything... If prison solved the situation we
wouldn't have to keep building new ones, bigger ones, and making people
pay for them.
"I feel that as a judge I have an obligation to tell you what works.
I tell you that longer prison sentences don't keep people from using
drugs. We can liberate ourselves from the notion that longer prison
sentences are going to solve this problem.
"We need to insist on public policy that invests in what we want or
we will get public policy that invests in what we don't want. I we want
people to be treated and delivered from substance abuse and addiction,
then we need to invest our time and money in those areas.
"Building prisons to solve drug problem is like building cemeteries
as an answer to cancer."
Judge Griffen suggested a "tithe" of the prison budget be dedicated
to pro-active programs such as youth intervention and family building.
"We've bought into a big bad lie," Judge Griffen concluded. In
describing how jobs have moved from agriculture to industry and now to
the new information age, he observed that Arkansas needed to replace
jobs that had moved offshore. But instead of changing the educational
system to prepare people for jobs in the new information age, "we
decided to get new factories called prisons."
Now, Judge Griffen continued, there are white communities that would
never tolerate black or brown people moving in who will pay to build
prisons that are populated with black and brown people. And this is
because running a prison provides employment to the local white
community.
Speakers also addressed the importance of appropriate child care that
stimulates emotional bonding and mental development (Sue Martin) and the
implementation of effective interactions between teachers, counselors
and other providers for troubled kids in elementary school (Tonya
Childress). For children in teen years, there are effective intervention
materials developed by Dr. Irene Lee at the University of Arkansas at
Pine Bluff, available through each county's cooperative extensive
service office.
Discussion included an overview of juvenile justice processes and
shortcomings (April Rye and Juanita Jackson), and one panel was devoted
to special problems that increase risk for kids, such as improper
nutrition (Marilou Brodie), brain disorders (Joyce Soularie), and
over-reaction to teenage behavior with "zero tolerance" policies (Rita
Sklar). Of special concern are situations where young black males are
singled out for disciplinary action at a much higher rate than young
white males, even though the offending act may be the same (Dr. Wynona
Bryant-Williams).
One panel of speakers focused on new ideas for funding pro-active
youth programs. Don Crary of New Futures for Youth described a Little
Rock tax-based program that targets entire neighborhoods with facilities
and programs that provide opportunities for young people to learn and
contribute back to their communities. Since the implementation of the
New Futures programs, crime rates among youth have dropped
significantly.
Geoff Oelsner described innovative intervention techniques for
treating addiction that involve advanced types of meditation and other
Buddhist methods. Denele Campbell explained that money seized in
drug arrests could provide an important new source of funding for
pro-active programs and youth substance abuse treatment. Mike Huddleston
discussed the correlation between lack of available substance abuse
treatment programs and an increase in substance abuse.
Question and answer periods and a concluding discussion were
facilitated by Anne Murphy, who helped participants define specific
objectives for future action, which included the creation of a resource
guide that would help parents and service providers in each community be
informed of programs and funding that are available.
Many participants volunteered to network on activities that would
include reform of state laws, such as alternative sentencing for
nonviolent offenders and dedicating a percentage of the criminal justice
budget to support prevention programs.
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