Prison Abolition Movement - Illicit Drugs and Prison

Illicit Drugs and Prison

One of the major issues that many prison abolitionists have with prisons is the significant increase in the number of people incarcerated due to mandatory sentencing and penalties for individuals involved in the drug trade. Many claim the fact that the rise from 41,000 to 500,000 people in prison since 1980 for drug related charges shows the ineffective nature of prisons. The supposed ineffective nature of prisons in this instance provides those within the movement an explanation as to why prisons should be abolished. The majority of these charges are due to what many in the anti-prison movement term unreasonable mandatory penalties that "impose a ‘one size fits all’ sentencing structure fails to account for the individual circumstances of the offender and the offense." One of the major drugs that prison abolitionist target as a prime example for why prisons are ineffective is crack. Crack is a drug that is cheap and is derived from cocaine. Crack has been the focus of many debates in relation to the harshness of prison sentences because the penalty of being caught with crack is much greater than with cocaine. The ramification of these harsh sentences is that it affects the street peddler instead of the drug lords and kingpins. In the eyes of many abolitionists the system also places too much fault with these lower-level trafficking individuals instead of targeting the whole complex hierarchy within the trade. A problem with targeting lower-level individuals in the drug market is that it presents a racial bias and provides another reason for the abolition of prisons. According to The Sentencing Project, 2/3 of the users of crack cocaine in the U.S. are Hispanic and/or White. While their lower level distributors are from the same racial/ethnic background, the majority of the those being locked up are people of color; in 2006, 81.8% of the defendants in crack cases were African American. In recent months the prison abolitionist have obtained some very important, though unintended, supporters. President Barack Obama of the U.S. has "declared that ‘the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.’" Recently, the American Medical Association (AMA) stated that marijuana should be classified as a lesser class of narcotic because of its invaluable medicinal properties. These are seen as very important steps in reducing the strain on society by wrongful incarceration and provide support for prison abolitionist claims.