Candidate for governor visits Union Square, calls for an end to new jail construction

Activists call for end to new jail construction
By George P. Hassett

  The Union Square Plaza was one stop on a six city tour Monday for a group of anti-prison activists opposed to a possible new jail in east Somerville. The group, the Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition (SHaRC), called for a moratorium on jail expansion in Middlesex County.

   Green Rainbow Party candidate for governor Grace Ross attended the stand out and pledged her support for the group’s cause. Ross said the cost of incarcerating one prisoner is $43,000 per year and that many prisoners would be better served by expanded medical care to treat drug and alcohol addictions.
“Neither Democrats or Republicans are being fiscally responsible when it comes to incarceration,” Ross said. “We’re throwing $43,000 away to put a person in a box and leave them there.”
  Ross said $43,000 could buy housing subsidies for eight homeless families and six hospital beds for people in need of urgent medical care.
  SHaRC volunteers began the day at the construction site of the Chicopee women’s jail then traveled to Worcester, Lowell, Somerville, Cambridge and Boston meeting with citizens and community leaders.
  The group stopped in Somerville to voice their opposition to Middlesex County Sheriff James V. DiPaola’s proposal for a new jail in the eastern section of the city, said SHaRC leader and Somerville resident Susan Mortimer.
  DiPaola said in June that he needs a new facility to house prisoners because of overcrowding conditions in the Middlesex County jail in East Cambridge. The jail houses 370 inmates, but was designed for only 160, he said at the time. The jail occupies floors 17 through 22 of the Middlesex County Courthouse, which is targeted for closing by the end of 2007 to undergo asbestos removal and a $125 million rehabilitation.
  Officials have toured several sites in east Somerville as potential replacements but it is still very early in the process, Thomas P. Champion, spokesperson for Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone, said in June. DiPaola said the jail could cost $250 million to build.   
  State Rep. Carl M. Sciortino, D-Somerville, who attended Monday’s event, has voiced his concerns about a new jail in the city.
  “We need to take a serious look at how we use our resources,” Sciortino said. “And before we talk about building more jail space, we need to fully restore the substance abuse and mental health programs that have been cut.”
  Sciortino said he would support a moratorium on new jail construction in Massachusetts.
  Robin Yearwood, a Malden woman, took the wrong bus Monday and found herself in Union Square speaking with the anti-prison activists. Yearwood’s boyfriend is incarcerated at the Nashua Street Jail in Boston, awaiting trial. She planned to pay $600 to bail him out.
  “It’s a continuous thing. He gets out of jail, can’t get a job because of his record and soon enough, he does something stupid to get himself locked up again,” Yearwood said. “It’s his own fault for making bad decisions, but what do you do when you have no options? There has to be a better solution than to just keep locking him up.”

Comments

[Mr. Hassett, why do we have two posts regarding the Prisons?]

Seems odd. Maybe there was a tad bit more information on the second posting, but the posts that were written on the first story will go for naught.

[So I will post two posts from the original (1)]

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.

If the United States legalized pot the population of inmates would be reduced dramatically, but the "industry" would lose millions of dollars.

I personally believe that alcohol is a bigger danger and takes more lives in this country than pot ever will.

[(2)]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The prison-industrial complex refers to interest groups that represent organizations that do business in correctional facilities, such as prison guard unions, construction companies, and surveillance technology vendors, who some people believe are more concerned with making more money than actually rehabilitating criminals or reducing crime rates. Additionally, some prisons provide free or low-cost labor for state or municipal governments as well as jobs for union members, which can be seen as another profitable side-benefit born from building and maintaining a large prison system.

Such has led to the rise of the Prison industry. Writing for The Atlantic Monthly in December 1998, Eric Schlosser said that "The prison-industrial complex is not only a set of interest groups and institutions. It is also a state of mind. The lure of big money is corrupting the nation's criminal-justice system, replacing notions of safety and public service with a drive for higher profits. The eagerness of elected officials to pass tough-on-crime legislation — combined with their unwillingness to disclose the external and social costs of these laws — has encouraged all sorts of financial improprieties."[1]

These views are shared widely by critics of the carceral state, retributive justice, military-industrial complex, the War on Terrorism, the War on Drugs, militarism and Homeland Security.

[IfCollegeKidsRanTheWorld]

Do you have any evidence that legalizing pot would reduce the prison population. You must be a college student because that is such a vague assumption. A good friend of mine is a city cop and believe me most of these people getting arrested for drugs aren't pushing pot. Please provide me some sort of data that shows that the majority of drug related inmates are in there because of pot. Please, if you ever grew up around these dealers you would be happy they are locked up. They are anti-social scumbags that sell death to people. Go back to the suburbs.

[brickbottom]

"Go back to the suburbs" Who's making the assumption now? I have lived here all my life. Here you go sonny boy:

Marijuana Arrests For Year 2004: 771,608, Record High; FBI Report Reveals

October 17, 2005 - Washington, DC, USA

Pot Smokers Arrested In America At A Rate Of One Every 41 Seconds

Washington, DC: Police arrested an estimated 771,608 persons for marijuana violations in 2004, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 44.2 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor marijuana offenders," said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 41 seconds in America. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."

Of those charged with marijuana violations, 89 percent - some 684,319 Americans - were charged with possession only. The remaining 87,289 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses - even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use. In past years, approximately 30 percent of those arrested were age 19 or younger.

"Present policies have done little if anything to decrease marijuana's availability or dissuade youth from trying it," St. Pierre said, noting that a majority of young people in the U.S. now report that they have easier access to pot than alcohol or tobacco.

The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2004 far exceeded the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Marijuana arrests have more than doubled since 1993.

"Arresting adults who smoke marijuana responsibly needlessly destroys the lives of tens of thousands of otherwise law abiding citizens each year," St. Pierre said, adding that over 8 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges in the past decade. During this same time, arrests for cocaine and heroin have declined sharply, indicating that increased enforcement of marijuana laws is being achieved at the expense of enforcing laws against the possession and trafficking of more dangerous drugs.

St. Pierre concluded that "with nearly 17 million citizens arrested on marijuana-related charges since 1965, is now not the time for the state and federal governments to finally consider legally controlling marijuana via taxation? Is not such a public policy preferable to the current one where government arrests an extraordinary amount of citizens for an adult behavior that is not deviant, or, for that matter, dissimilar than consuming products that contain alcohol?"

YEAR MARIJUANA ARRESTS

2004 771,608
2003 755,187
2002 697,082
2001 723,627
2000 734,498
1999 704,812
1998 682,885
1997 695,200
1996 641,642
1995 588,963
1994 499,122
1993 380,689

[brickbottom]

College Kid,

Do you realize how much wasted resources are used by arresting someone for marijuana?

Sure there are plenty of scumbags selling harder drugs that should be taken of the street.

You figure out of the over 771,608 arrests made that year for marijuana, all the wasted manpower (probably millions of hours)that police use to combat a substance that is less harmful than alcohol it is ridiculous that this manpower is not used to combat real crime or people pushing hard drugs.

So tell your cop friend he is dead wrong and so are you. I know plenty of people serving time for pot related crimes.

Get your facts straight before you open your trap.

[ifcollegekidsrantheworld is an idiot]

people who sell marijuana are selling death? You're a moron. NEXT!

[Ron Newman]

People who sell tobacco are 'selling death', but we don't put them in prison. We license them and occasionally send people around to ensure that they abide by age restrictions.

Treating marijuana differently from this is irrational.