The Gutter

It has been said that America is the last, best hope of man on Earth. We know America as the land of opportunity where anyone can succeed and become more than they are. Every young child across these fifty great United States wants to be the president and they can be; because in America, anything can be achieved with a little hard work, sacrifice and due diligence. America is the sum of hopes and dreams of over ten generations of Americans.

However, in our attempts to make this a better nation for our children and their children, we have become ensconced in a War on Drugs to which victory can never be claimed and a War on Terror that will carry us far into the 21^st century. In trying to better this nation, we have created an epidemic. From 1984 to 1996, the state of California built 21 new prisons, and only one new university.[1] And while the recent prison building frenzy has created approximately 400,000 new jobs,[2] untold millions of dollars are lost in the fight of a forgotten war – The War on Poverty: "Every dollar transferred to a “prison community” is a dollar that is not given to the home community of a prisoner, which is often among the country’s most disadvantaged urban areas. According to one account, Cook County Illinois will lose nearly $88 million in federal benefits over the next decade because residents were counted in the 2000 Census in their county of incarceration rather than their county of origin (Duggan 2000). Losing funds from the “relocation” of prisoners is also an issue for New York City, as two-thirds of state prisoners are from the city, while 91 percent of prisoners are incarcerated in upstate counties (Wagner 2002a)."[3]

With the onset of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenders, the amount of money allocated for the Department of Prisons that could be spent on cleaning up city streets and helping the impoverished and underprivileged in our society has increased by 1,954%. The budget for the Department of Prisons has jumped from $220 million in 1986 to $4.3 billion in 2001.[4] These monies in addition to the over $87 billion spent on “Operation Iraqi Freedom” alone seek to protect American interests at home and abroad. We seem to be forgetting however that American interests at home include the homeless and the unfortunate on our own city streets. Lest we not forget Cleveland, Detroit, Miami, El Paso, Atlanta, Buffalo, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Newark our ten poorest big cities as we battle the never ceasing dilemmas of drugs and terror that plague our nation.

The great John F. Kennedy meant to say these words on the day that he was assassinated: "We in this country, in this generation, are - by destiny rather than choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of 'peace on earth, goodwill toward men.' That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago, 'except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.'" Freedom is not just for the rich and privileged. It is for the weak, the oppressed, the hungry, the homeless, the incarcerated and the entire plane of human an existence. We cannot differentiate one from another. I am not advocating the use of illegal drugs or condemning the necessary eradication of the evil that is terrorism in all forms Muslim, Christian, or whatever the form may be. I am however posing a question that has to be asked. Is the war on drugs really worth its cost? Yes it has bettered the lives of over 400,000 families through the creation of jobs but how many lives has it shattered? How many men and women go to jail for marijuana possession and are now sentenced in some states to mandatory sentences upwards of five years. Wouldn’t the portion of that $4.3 billion the United States Government spent on incarcerating non-violent drug offenders be better spent bettering the lowest of the low? Helping them to help themselves toward what should be the America we all want; the last, best hope for man on Earth.

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[1] Ambrosio, T. & Schiraldi, V., "Trends in State Spending, 1987-1995", Executive Summary-February 1997 (Washington DC: The Justice Policy Institute, 1997)

[2] Bauer, Lynn & Steven D. Owens, "Justice Expenditure and Employment in the United States, 2001" (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2004), NCJ202792, p. 6.

[3] Lawrence, Sarah and Jeremy Travis, "The New Landscape of Imprisonment: Mapping America's Prison Expansion" (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, April 2004), p. 3.

[4] US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1996 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, 1997), p. 20; Executive Office of the President, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2002 (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 2001), p. 134.