Janine Jackson: “Police Arrest More People for Marijuana Use than for All Violent Crimes Combined” is the headline in the Washington Post. In the New York Times, it’s “Marijuana Arrests Outnumber Those for Violent Crimes, Study Finds.”
It’s a blockbuster datum, all right, but one hopes people will read past those headlines, because there’s a lot more in the new report.”Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States,” a study from Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, is a multi-level, cradle-to-grave if you will, look at the myriad impacts of the criminalization — selective criminalization — of drug possession on the people caught up in the system.
We’re joined now in studio by the report’s lead author. Tess Borden is the Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. Welcome to CounterSpin, Tess Borden.
Tess Borden: Thank you. Great to be here, Janine.
It is, as I say, a rich report. Give us a sense of the overall focus and intent. What’s being pulled together here and toward what end?
So this is the result of a yearlong investigation by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU into how failed, and very ultimately flawed, the law enforcement approach to personal drug use is. And we wanted to bring to the public’s attention, and to policymakers’ attention, the magnitude of criminalization, but also the human impact. And so I interviewed more than 360 people. A hundred and fifty of those were prosecuted for their own drug use, or possession of drugs for personal use; 64 of them were in custody when I met them. I also spoke to mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, uncles, children — adult children — of those incarcerated, as well as prosecutors and police and judges and service providers. And so I think, really, there are some 60 stories in the report, and I really urge people to get to know those folks who are described in the report, and whose stories and lives have been really shaped by the drug…