Commentary –

More Drug Madness

By William A. Collins

Lots of prisoners,

Hereabout;

Tougher laws,

Don’t let them out.

Have you ever wondered why our prison population keeps spiraling up in the midst of such a booming economy? Why don’t more of those thugs just go out and get jobs?

Well, many have. That’s why crime rates are spiraling down. The reason for these conflicting spirals lies elsewhere. It has to do with sentencing. Lawmakers have fashioned many draconian punishments, and police and prosecutors get their kicks out of imposing them.

Here is a telling case. A young man here in Norwalk was recently turned in by his dad, after imprudently leaving a sack of cocaine-filled envelopes in the family bathroom. The police woke the suspect and threw the book at him. The most intriguing charge was “possession of narcotics within 1,500 feet of a school.”

As you might expect, that law was initially passed to comfort parents. It assured them that dealers who hung around schools tempting little kids would suffer special punishment. The legislator who proposed it, now a judge, got good political mileage from it. I hope he ends up with this case. But presumably even he did not foresee that his handiwork would provide special punishment for merely sleeping within 1,500 feet of a school. The mandatory sentence is two years, three if you foolishly divided your stash into doses. Such packaging constitutes “intent to sell.” These extra years are added on to whatever other term you’re given for plain possession.

It may have already occurred to you that not everyone lives within 1,500 feet of a school. In our neighboring suburbs, for example, the percentage is fairly low. But in the poor sections of Norwalk and other cities, that percentage is high. And not surprisingly, since race is related so closely to income, a major portion of those target residents are black and Hispanic.

Thus, in practice, we have invented a whole new crime to go along with Driving While Black. It’s called Sleeping While Black. If caught with drugs in your house, your sentence will be two or three years longer than that of a white suburbanite convicted of possessing the very same stuff. It is claimed that in New Britain, for example, there is not one home that is not within 1,500 feet of a school. And now it’s worse.

The General Assembly has added public housing and day care centers to schools. That pretty much finishes coloring in Norwalk’s map too.

But even whites do sometimes get caught in this web. Not long ago some malefactors driving along US 7 were pulled over as they passed Wilton High School. Tough luck. If that officer had sneezed and stopped them 1,500 feet later, they would be out of jail three years earlier.

Counterpoised against this brutish sentencing system is America’s latest brutish $1.3 billion gift to Colombia. It may possibly sell some Sikorsky helicopters, but it won’t help Connecticut’s drug problem.

Shifting our share of that $1.3 billion boondoggle into treatment programs, however, would. In fact, just shifting the wasted incarceration cost of our own overly-sentenced prisoners would do the job too. We could then offer 12-step programs, methadone treatment, and religion-based renewal in every jail and every neighborhood. We do precious little of those things now. Thus our prison doors remain revolving doors, even with less crime being committed.

Yes, there will always be drug dealers, but if we can cut down on their market demand, some of them will actually have to go out and get honest work.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)