Video: The House I Live In Flashcards
What are the costs of the war on drugs?
- 45 million arrests
- Cost over 1 trillion $$
The war on drugs is a war on
All Americans, it was never really about drugs.
What drugs haven’t destroyed…
The war against them has
The cop says sometimes he thinks you can trace any crime…
Back to drugs
People in law enforcement believe that everyone in the community is…
Completely corrupt - everyone is living off drug money, there is no moral centre - blame everyone but themselves.
The Community genuinely believes that law enforcement is..
Using the war on drugs to destroy the community - everyone hates what’s going on
People think that the war on drugs is a foreign problem, in reality
The biggest drug industry is in the US not Mexico or Colombia
Addiction is an effect of
suffering - not why the addiction but why the pain?
Most people who do drugs also..
Sell drugs to support their own habit.
Who is being put into prisons?
Poor, uneducated people.
Who were Maurice’s role models?
Gang bangers and drug dealers. His mother was addicted to drugs and he doesn’t remember his father; he was killed right after Maurice was born.
Judge Bennet was the first judge to…
To reduce the ratio to 1:1, it was largely symbolic however because the mandatory minimum takes presidence, so Maurice got 20 years anyways.
The average person Judge Bennet sentences
The average person he sentences is a middle class blue-collar worker who lost their job and turned to selling to make money
What was the case of Kevin Hart (not the comedian)
sentenced for trafficking 3oz of meth and will serve a life sentence. He started selling meth because he got laid off, then he started using it and had to sell it to pay for it. His father was addicted to heroin after returning from Vietnam, His sister died in a car wreck coming to visit him
If you get caught with drugs (regardless of what kind) and then get a … you get …
trafficking charge you get life without parole
Over … are incarcerated for drug crimes
500,000
Who is the largest employer in Oklahoma
The prison system
How are prison communities being produced?
Private Prisons require a town to build the facility and they will run it, both will profit and now they’re looking for more people to fill the prisons, regardless of the reason. There’s a whole range of companies that rely on the prison to make a profit, they aren’t doing anything deliberately wrong but are reinforcing all the problems in the war on drugs.
At every stage, Black Americans are…
Disproportionately represented… There are more black people in the Justice system than were enslaved in the 1800s
Criminal law impacts..
Minorities Disproportionately
The Drug war began as a
a war on dangerous narcotics - can be traced back to the 50s with narcotic squads,
Use of narcotics was truly a counterculture - a very small percentage of people involved in heroin/cocaine it was back alley, not widespread
The addict population was always distinctly…
Biracial
The drug laws have done more harm than good.. why?
A structural problem – too many people in prisons, mostly African American mostly male
How many children have a parent in jail?
2.7 million
What does the war on drugs have to do with politics?
we’ve made drugs such an issue - you can’t get elected without fighting the war on drugs, can stay elected without acting on it
Why are people doing a lot of time for not much crime?
they’re paying for societies fear rather than their crime
People expect that when inmates get out of prison they will be informed, however..
They’re in the same place as when they started, they haven’t been given any skills, They’ve never really had self respect and
rehabilitation programs are often the first thing that gets cut.
Despite Black people being disproportionately affected, their circumstances affect anyone regardless of colour – how so
- We got rid of so many unionized jobs and legitimate jobs that could provide for families that white people became marginalized too and had to turn to drugs
Regardless of drugs, the circumstances lead to the same result
A war on drugs is a war on…
A war on drugs has to be a war on every level of Government and in Society
Drug dealers are what in the community?
Leaders in the community - they support neighbours with the money they make – “I loved them because when they came around it was Christmas”
What about Personal Responsibility?
There are structural issues, kids who live in a crowded home, go to school hungry, lack attention, hear gunshots and fights where they live.
No economic opportunity, how are they supposed to get out? Working on a drug corner is the same rationale as working for the only company in town. Those arrested find themselves in a perpetuating cycle - can’t get a job with a felony charge, can’t get into college - can’t get certain healthcare, live in certain neighbourhoods, can’t live in public housing, can’t vote – vicious cycle
The casualty in the war on drugs is..
Drug dealers and users - they all represent multi-generational history, cultural circumstances, social context
Who started the drug war by saying - “America’s Public Enemy is Drug Abuse”
President Nixon - war on drugs was officiated by Nixon born under him in the 60s/70s to push his votes in the polls. First to coin the term War on Drugs - under him 2/3 of the budget of war on drugs was directed to treatment rather than law enforcement
Nixon had been far more successful with treatment than enforcement but..
returned to fighting the war on drugs and focused on passing laws against drugs involving harsh penalties
Do cops have warrants for arrest usually?
A drug arrest does not require anything but approaching people. Probable Cause is often far reaching and people who aren’t committing crimes get stopped
Drug laws affect both
Sellers and Law Enforcement
How do drug laws affect Law Enforcement?
Officers get paid overtime for filling out paperwork – more arrests look better, essentially getting paid for stats. Drug arrests are double and violent crimes are halved,
Financial incentives built into the system pretty much guarantees that drug arrests are more likely for low level trafficking and non violence.
What does Carl Hart study and why?
Psychology – Many of his friends/family got caught up in drugs, he studies the science behind addiction. His research has shown him that drug laws are less constructed over drugs themselves and more about race and discrimination.
Carl would like to see what used in Public Policy?
Empirical Evidence
What was the focus of the war on drugs in the 80s/90s and what is it now? Who is associated with each?
It used to be Crack/Cocaine which was associated with Black people and now it is Meth which is associated with poor whites and gays
No part of history affected the black community like…
Regan’s 8 year presidency
Why was Regan’s statement “they will use all of the government forces (FDA, FBI etc…) to eliminate this dark and evil enemy” a political statement?
Because drug usage was on the decline – images of Black people were shown smoking crack on TV. Whenever you introduce a drug to society, you can say incredible things about it and everyone will believe it.
Regan signed into law what for drug usage?
mandatory minimum sentencing for drug usage, penalty for Crack was 100x more intense than regular cocaine (because Blacks were using Crack and Whites were using cocaine). A crack defendant with 5g is treated the same as a defendant with 500g of powdered cocaine - this falls disproportionately on minorities.
Who uses more crack, Whites or Blacks? Who is more represented in the system?
Whites use more crack than Blacks (13%), 90% of crack defendants in the system are Black
There is a Chain of Destruction across time and societies – these same steps keep happening:
- ) Identification
- ) Ostracism
- ) Confiscation
- ) Concentration
- ) Annihilation
What are the processes of each step?
Begins with identification where a group of people are seen as troublesome and worthless, making them the centre of fear
○ Second is Ostracism where we learn how to hate these people, take their jobs and marginalize them, apply special laws to them, they are all of a sudden criminals
○ Third is Confiscation: people lose their rights and civil liberties and it becomes easier for them to be searched, lose their property – the logical next step is to confiscate their person
○ Fourth is Concentration: concentrate them into communities, camps – they are forced into areas of least opposition (ghetto’s) where they financially cannot prosper
Final is Annihilation: might be indirect: withholding medical care, food, reproduction or can be direct: confiscation
An extraordinary amount of people are in prison due to drugs but there is no…
An extraordinary amount of people in prison are in because of drugs but there is no rehabilitation within them, when they get out they’re in the exact same position –> Creates a culture of hopelessness where they have to turn to drugs
Drug wars create an enemy from..
Nothing. (same as Germany with scape-goating jews and anti-semitism) Those who do drugs are causing all our problems, we label them our enemy: "Holocaust in slow motion" - there is an incredible destruction of lives that is class based
Historically, people who were using drugs were viewed:
Sympathetically, heroin, opium etc… was widely used and accepted
When did a change of views on drug use emerge?
Change began when Opium was criminalized in California, it wasn’t criminalized because of Opium, it was because many Opium smokers were Chinese, they had just migrated and were ‘stealing’ white jobs, so the Gov’t had to find a way to criminalize them
Cocaine was originally used by
Cocaine was originally used by upper class, housewives but at the turn of the century began to be overwhelmingly consumed by Blacks leading to its criminalization
Marijuana was criminalized when..
When it became associated with Mexicans - used as a way to uphold the economic pecking order
In New Mexico, what was the sheriff doing?
Fishing for criminals:
- Profiling vehicles to try and find those with drugs. Police Departments can operate off the money they seize and can pull people over and seize the money in their car and tow the car.
Officers have expressed concern about:
not only about their impact but also in regards to the relationship between the community and police
What family cycle can help reinforce drug abuse
Cycles where the father is absent and the mother is trying to raise the children - many of the children can’t break out of the cycle
Why and when did Nanny Jenkins move up North?
Apart of the Great Migration, she said the atmosphere was very different up north, she missed the atmosphere of the South. She moved because of the Jim Crow laws, though she loved the South she felt compelled to leave
In the Great Migration, when many blacks got up North they found that…
Many found they hadn’t escaped Jim Crow at all, they were in a different system that kept them confined in certain parts of the city now defined as Ghettos
- areas that are economically depressed and wouldn’t write mortgages in those areas – it was designed to be Ghettos
They were denied access economically, they had to improvise
What effect did Nanny Jenkins move up North have on her kids?
Her kids being left alone – her son got into drugs and died by contracting aids from heroin needles
What is the main point of the video?
- -> Shifting focus away from criminalization and to prevention
- Although there is decades of damage, the system is built around the drug war
