Last Tuesday, the New York City Council voted to stop testing probationers for marijuana use. The move is a reminder that even as states hammer out rules to legalize use—as New York is working through right now—remnants of the drug war have left a large population of Americans subject to the draconian measures of post-prison supervision.
There are more than 4.5 million people on probation or parole in the U.S., nearly twice the number of people behind bars at any given time. All of these folks are subject to incarceration if they violate the terms of their supervised release, and in most places, a prohibition on using cannabis products may be one of those terms.
"Marijuana is a big issue when it comes to parole, but it's just the tip of the iceberg" explains Tyler Nims, the executive director of the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform. "Parole is a huge issue in criminal justice reform and in particular in New York. But it's unseen and unknown."
According to analysis of probation and parole figures put together by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a little more than half of probation and parole stints end without incident. But nearly 350,000 people get new jail terms annually because they've failed to complete probation or parole with a spotless record. In some states, revocation of supervised release is the main driver of incarceration. In Georgia, for example, 67 percent of new prison admissions in 2015 were due to revoked probation or parole. The same was true in Rhode Island, where 64 percent of new prison admissions in 2016 were due to supervised release revocations.
Judges have wide discretion to set the terms for release. That often includes prohibiting behavior that is otherwise perfectly legal. Probation and parole guidelines can limit where people go, who they can consort with, and what they may or may not consume. Earlier this year, a judge in Hawaii told a man arrested for stealing car that he could not consume Pepsi while on probation—and put him under supervised release for four years. While incidents like that one are relatively rare, prohibiting the use of marijuana while on supervised release is standard.
Whether marijuana use will continue to be deemed a violation is something to watch and weigh in on as state-level legalization continues.
Nims tells Reason that his organization started exploring parole reform as a way to close Rikers Island prison, shift the city toward smaller jails closer to the criminal courts across the boroughs, and reduce the city's overall jail population.
The good news is that incarceration in general is on the decline in cities across the country, including New York. But there's a big exception.
"Every category of person being detained has been decreasing except for those who are there for parole reasons," Nims says. He calculates that 40 percent of the city's parolees are re-incarcerated for non-criminal violations: things like failing drug tests and not living where they're ordered to live. Nims knew of a convicted sex offender who was given clearance by his parole officer to purchase a particular type of cell phone that didn't have internet access. It turned out the officer was wrong, and the offender was sent back to jail for a year for having the phone.
Parole and probation was not supposed to be this cruel, explains Vincent Schiraldi, a former New York City probation commissioner who is now co-director of Columbia University's Justice Lab. The prospect of getting out of prison earlier in exchange for being supervised was presented as an act of mercy or leniency. But as incarceration rates increased in lockstep with longer sentences, more people were put on parole and probation under increasingly strict terms. Supervised release changed from an act of mercy to a different form of punishment.
"As probation grew, you'd expect incarceration to decline," Schiraldi says. "It's much more logical to conclude that it's an add-on. It's just a net widener."
Schiraldi told a a New York Assembly committee in October that there's no public safety justification for routine marijuana testing of people on probation or parole. He testified that the research showed drug testing increased the likelihood of somebody ending back up in jail for technical violations, but did not actually reduce criminal behavior. In order to avoid testing positive, probationers and parolees instead avoid their mandatory meetings with supervisors, which causes yet another technical violation (known as absconding), which makes them even more likely to end up back in prison.
Schiraldi recommended to the Assembly that any law legalizing marijuana in New York should remove marijuana abstinence as a condition for parole or probation. When his office decided on to stop testing for marijuana, they were able to cut probation revocations nearly in half, and only four percent of their clients were convicted of a new felony within a year following the end of probation.
The push to end marijuana testing is part of a larger effort to reform and restore some of the mercy parole and probation were intended to provide and reduce the likelihood it ends with people being sent back to prison. In December 2018, a coalition of criminal justice reformers partnered with Assemblyman Walter Mosley (D-Brooklyn) to introduce the Less is More: Community Supervision Revocation Reform Act to try to make it less likely that technical violations of parole will lead to people getting sent back behind bars.
The Less Is More Act would eliminate incarceration for most technical violations, and for any exceptions would cap a return to prison to a maximum of 30 days. People under supervision will also be able to earn credits to reduce the amount of time they have to spend on parole. And when somebody on parole gets snagged for an alleged violation, they will be provided a hearing before they're detained (In New York City, somebody taken in for a parole violation can end up sitting at Rikers for 90 days before the state decides whether to send them back to prison). Several district attorneys, police chiefs, sheriffs, and many criminal justice reform organizations have signed on to support the bill.
A similar push is underway in Pennsylvania, where rapper Meek Mill has drawn attention to the arbitrary and harsh nature of how probation violations are handled. Mill faced two- to four-year prison sentence for a probation violation after he was filmed popping a wheelie on a dirt bike. He was eventually freed a year ago and used the experience to launch a justice reform group to change the way probation is handled. In early April, Meek's new group, the REFORM Alliance, put together a rally in Philadelphia to support probation reforms.
There was a bill introduced in Pennsylvania in January, SB 14, that would cap the length of probation to five years for felonies, three years for misdemeanors, and would also, like the Less Is More Act, limit the amount of time somebody can be incarcerated for technical (but not criminal) violations of probation.
Nims and Schiraldi both see these changes in parole and probation as vital reforms to our criminal justice system, up there with reforming bail systems that keep poor people trapped behind bars before they're ever convicted, and the elimination or reduction of mandatory minimum sentences that have handed down abnormally long prison terms for people convicted of certain types of drug crimes. Part of those reforms include making sure that as marijuana is legalized across the country, it doesn't remain a reason that people on parole or probation get sent back to prison.
"It's one of the least productive things you can do to for somebody coming back to the community," Nims says.
Check out the rest of our stories for Weed Week 2019.
Apple CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday announced that the company would join two French billionaires and the energy company Total in donating money to help rebuild the cathedral of Notre Dame after Monday's devastating fire.
While Cook framed the decision as contributing to efforts to restore France's "heritage for future generations", we wonder if his Silicon Valley peers will see it the same way.
We are heartbroken for the French people and those around the world for whom Notre Dame is a symbol of hope. Relieved that everyone is safe. Apple will be donating to the rebuilding efforts to help restore Notre Dame’s precious heritage for future generations.🇫🇷
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 16, 2019
After all, the Catholic Church, which owns Notre Dame, has a well-documented history of homophobia and covering up sexual abuse by priests - two issues that are anathema to Bay Area techies.
Apple didn't respond to requests for comment about Cook's announcement. But in unrelated news, as the French business elite rallies to save the cathedral, a video has circulated purporting to show two gilets-jaune protesters walking along one of the cathedral's two towers shortly before the blaze began.
Could Apple's decision to donate to the cathedral turn Apple into the next Chick Fil-A? Or is the risk worth it, because perhaps Cook and the other billionaires will request shiny new luxury goods stores be installed in the cathedral as part of the renovations?
The European Union agreed Monday to a wide range of copyright reforms, including one that makes tech companies liable for violations.
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
There are no extreme "fixes" to secular declines in sales, profits, employment, tax revenues and asset prices.
The saying "never let a crisis go to waste" embodies several truths worth pondering as the stock market nears new highs. One truth is that extreme policies that would raise objections in typical times can be swept into law in the "we have to do something" panic of a crisis.
Thus wily insiders await (or trigger) a crisis which creates an opportunity for them to rush their self-serving "fix" into law before anyone grasps the long-term consequences.
A second truth is that crises and solutions are generally symmetric: a moderate era enables moderate solutions, crisis eras demand extreme solutions. Nobody calls for interest rates to fall to zero in eras of moderate economic growth, for example; such extreme policies may well derail the moderate growth by incentivizing risk-taking and excessive leverage.
Speculative credit bubbles inevitably deflate, and this is universally viewed as a crisis, even though the bubble was inflated by easy money, fraud, embezzlement and socializing risk and thus was entirely predictable.
The Federal Reserve and other central banks are ready for bubble-related financial crises: they have the extreme tools of zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP), negative-interest rate policy (NIRP), unlimited credit lines, unlimited liquidity, the purchase of trillions of dollars of assets, etc.
But what if the current speculative credit bubbles in junk bonds, stocks and other assets don't crash into crisis? What if they deflate slowly, losing value steadily but with the occasional blip up to signal "the Fed has our back" and all is well?
A slow, steady decline is precisely what we can expect in an era of credit exhaustion, which I've covered recently: ( The Coming Global Financial Crisis: Debt Exhaustion). The central bank "solution" to runaway credit expansion that flowed into malinvestment was to lower interest rates to zero and enable tens of trillions in new debt. As a result, global debt has skyrocketed from $84 trillion to $250 trillion. Debt in China has blasted from $7 trillion 2008 to $40 trillion in 2018.
A funny thing happens when you depend on borrowing from the future (i.e. debt) to fund growth today: the new debt no longer boosts growth, as the returns on additional debt diminish. This leads to what I term credit/debt exhaustion: lenders can no longer find creditworthy borrowers, borrowers either don't want more debt or can't afford more debt. Whatever credit is issued is gambled in speculations that the current bubble du jour will continue indefinitely-- a bet guaranteed to fail spectacularly, as every speculative credit bubble eventually implodes.
As expanding credit no longer generates real-world growth, growth slows.Over time, marginal borrowers default as revenues and profits erode, and this triggers a corresponding erosion in employment and wages.
This erosion is so gradual, it doesn't qualify as a crisis, and therefore central banks can't unleash crisis-era fixes. Not only do they lack the political will to launch extreme policies in a moderate decline, it would be unwise to empty the tool bag of extreme fixes at the first hint of trouble; what's left for the crisis to come?
Even worse, if the extreme policies fail to restore rapid growth and more importantly,confidence in future rapid growth, then ramping up extreme policies will be correctly interpreted as the desperate acts of clueless authorities. This will crush confidence and trigger the very crisis the authorities sought to forestall.
There are no extreme "fixes" to secular declines in sales, profits, employment, tax revenues and asset prices. Moderate stagnation will not be reversed with moderate fixes (lowering interest rates a quarter of one percent, etc.), and any attempt to institute extreme policies will expose authorities' desperation right when confidence is vulnerable to collapse.
The Fed and other central banks are trapped in more ways than one.
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Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker says that Americans would be "less safe" if illegal immigrants were released from locked detention centers into migrant-friendly American cities - a plan which President Trump has threatened to explore.
When asked by Face the Nation's Margaret Brennan whether Trump's threat was an empty one, or if he was simply trying to create friction, Booker replied: "You say 'friction' -- I say he's trying to pit Americans against each other and make us less safe."
NEWS: @CoryBooker said @realDonaldTrump is “trying to pit Americans against each other and make us less safe” by threatening to release undocumented immigrants from the border into sanctuary cities in an exclusive interview with moderator @margbrennan https://t.co/3DqCvXjMaA pic.twitter.com/y2vRStlcPr
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) April 14, 2019
Following reports that the White House had discussed releasing a flood if migrants into Democratic-controlled, undocumented-friendly sanctuary cities, President Trump on Friday said that he was "giving strong considerations" to the idea.
....The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy – so this should make them very happy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019
Earlier Friday, the Washington Post and ABC News reported that the Trump administration had twiced pushed for transferring migrants to sanctuary cities, citing anonymous senior government officials familiar with the matter.
In response to taking detained migrants and placing them in the care of cities which have pledged to protect them, Democrats lashed out.
"The extent of this Administration’s cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated," said Nancy Pelosi's spokeswoman Ashley Etienne in a Friday statement. "Using human beings—including little children—as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable, and in some cases, criminal."
Noting safety concerns, Pelosi's aide added: "The American people have resoundingly rejected this Administration’s toxic anti-immigrant policies, and Democrats will continue to advance immigration policies that keep us safe and honor our values."
Cory Booker says on @FaceTheNation that releasing illegal immigrants into sanctuary cities will "make us less safe." Nice to see some hypocritical elected Democrats telling the truth now that they face a flood of illegals in their cities. pic.twitter.com/oFxqMsqBUz
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) April 14, 2019
On Saturday night, President Trump said over Twitter that "The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities," and demanded that "they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!"
Just out: The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities. We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2019
On Sunday Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) - chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that he doesn't "see a legal way" to release undocumented immigrants into sanctuary cities.
"More importantly, this is again his manufactured chaos he's created over the last two years on the border," said Thompson. "Before Donald Trump took office, we had a situation that was manageable. We had spikes, but it also went down, but what we have now is a constant pushing of the system so that it doesn't work."
Thompson added that transferring the migrants to sanctuary cities was "not about keeping the country safe, but about partisan politics and wantonly inflicting cruelty."
Perhaps Thompson could explain how taking migrants out of locked facilities and placing them in the care of sanctuary cities constitutes cruelty?
California Governor Gavin Newsom called the idea "asinine" - adding that it is "unserious," "illegal," and "sophomoric."
"It really is the sophistry of adolescence. It's not serious. It lacks any rationale. It's insulting to the American people and to the intelligence of the American people. It's un-American. It's illegal. It's immoral. It's rather pathetic. I don't know what more I can say," said Newsom.
Dems - Sanctuary cities: “compassionate and humane”
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) April 13, 2019
Also Dems - Releasing illegals into sanctuary cities: “uncompassionate and inhumane”
Dems - Green New Deal: “critical to Earth’s survival”
Also Dems - Voting on Green New Deal: “GOP stunt”
Any questions?
Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott said Sunday that President Donald Trump's threat to place immigrants into so-called sanctuary cities might just be the ...
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