Yeah, I had to mentally revisit this issue a year back when I read an article about it. I was one of the usual who laughed about it, and then realized the sexism inherent in that--and the faulty assumption of exactly what the psychological damage would be.

I don't laugh about it anymore.

There is only one way that I can think of to stop the incidence of prison rape. That is to keep prisoners strictly separated. At all times. That means one cell, one prisoner, no exceptions. That means meals served to prisoners in their cells; no joint sessions in shower stalls; no groups of prisoners milling around on open exercise fields. It means solitary confinement. Not necessarily in black holes. But each prisoner alone at all times. Perhaps a television with earphones only. Perhaps a computer and internet access. No doubt a library from which he could order books via the computer.

Such a policy, of course, would not only end the phenomenon of prison rapes. It would end prison beatings, prison murders, prison-based graduate schools which teach inmates how to be better criminals. It would end trouble of all types between prisoners. Because there would be no interpersonal social interaction of any type.

Such institutions already are in place, I understand. These would include some of the 'supermax' prisons where the violent and dangerous are sent. I would not be surprised to learn that these places crush whatever is left of the human spirit within 12 months of incarceration, and could rightfully be considered a fate worth than death itself. There should be no doubt at all that the SS Totenkopf (death's head) units ran the German Nazi concentration camps, and not the inmates, who were there to be put to be terrorized and put to death through purposeful and super-refined cruelty. But such a regimen should never be a part of the administrative culture of America.

So what else can be done?

If your mentality cannot accept the terrible reality of all of the above, then perhaps it is time to work for the reform of the prevalent American judicial and correctional systems. Despite that many of us would not necessarily approve of unlimited use of recreational drugs, this is not necessarily a justification for putting drug users into prisons alongside murderers, armed robbers and other dangerous sociopaths, where they will raped and taught the lessons of hard crime.

I do not have to proclaim the fact that I am not a liberal, and I am not preaching that now. But I believe it is possible to allow large numbers of persons now incarcerated to remain within society at large, with sufficient restrictions on their civil liberties to influence behavioral modification; the latter is supposed to be the main functional purpose of the correctional system to begin with. This sort of correctional system would also be greatly less expensive to maintain at public expense. Which is an interesting observation in light of the fact that corrections, along with state-managed gambling, is one of the main growth industries in numerous small towns around America, where people once had real jobs in manufacturing and commerce.

I believe in the possibility of behavioral rehabilitation, which really means behavioral modification. I would go so far as to allow felons to regain all their civil liberties, including the right to bear arms, if it can be shown they have earned the right to resume these liberties and the responsibilities that go with them.

But I think that the modern American prison system is not the venue in which this kind of rehabilitation can or will take place.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Let us not pass without mention of California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who giggled over the idea that Kenneth Lay might be compelled to enjoy such attentions.

I'm no fan of coddling convicted felons, but by the bleeding wounds of Christ, do such people as Lockyer and these pro-rape prison guards even understand the meaning of the word "decency"?

Having never been to prison it is difficult for me to empathize with the experience. It cannot be good, but then again it was not meant to be fun. However, prisoners should not be victimized by anyone, prisoner or guard. Guards and administrators know everything that happens in their prisons, it is a finite environment with loads of rat bastards. If the guards' union oppose this bill maybe it's time for the federal government to look into the California prison system.

If it were up to me a prison rape would be an offense subject to the three strikes statutes and if the rapist is already a lifer he gets solitary confinement for 10 years. Guards that knowingly abet or ignore rapes would be charged with as co-conspriators with a minimum twenty year sentence. This crime is very preventable and the people in charge of our prisons should be held legal and civilly culpable for not wanting or trying to stop it. Using rape as a control tool puts our prison system on par with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi prison system.

Would you kindly elaborate on the term, "masculist"?

Thanks in advance.

James Martin
Las Vegas, NV

Mr. Porretto,

I do not think you invoke the bleeding wounds of Christ in vain. Decency does matter. I vote with you.

Bill

Feminist = person concerned with female rights.
Masculist = person concerned with male rights.

And there are, in fact, a whole host of legal areas where men face social and legal discrimination and get the short end of the stick. Divorce law in many states is attrocious in how men are treated--particularly fathers. Abortion is a major issue for many men, because on the one side they can be forced into a major social and financial hardship solely by a single sexual encounter, even though women can't be, but on the flip side, even without being so much as informed or given a chance to give an opinion, his unborn child can be destroyed. The selective service system is something only men have to deal with. Sexual harassment accusations are almost invariably against men and can ruin a career even based only on hearsay. Men still to this day are often pilloried just for being honest about their sexual desires. Women who are abusive toward men are often considered amusing or "empowered." The list goes on--I could go on at length.

Now as it happens I think there's a root in biology for many things and that men and women will always be different. There is an age-old dynamic there that will always be with us. But if we are going to talk about areas in our society where women get the short end of the stick, it still strike me as entirely fair to discuss where men do. The issues are more than superficial, are not minor, and deserve serious discussion that they rarely ever get.

Eek! I'm an anti-Masculist!!!

"Abortion is a major issue for many men, because on the one side they can be forced into a major social and financial hardship solely by a single sexual encounter." Condoms are not 100%, and I suppose that somewhere in this big wide world there are men who force men to not only have sex but to have unprotected sex, but, I mean, what are the percentages? I think abortion should be a major issue for many men because they need to remember certain actions have consequences. I've been to Jersey, eat me.

As long as we're talking about dropping soap in the shower, it's worth noting that gang-related violence and war crimes are certainly not without the threat.

Thanks for that, Dean. I agree with you in most of those cases. No one should get the short end of the stick.

I'll be reading your stuff more often. I left a link to my journal. I used to run a blog until a certain person really disenchanted me about the whole idea of sharing opinions utilizing this medium, so, I'm underground now. More of my readers now seem more apt to handle an honest debate without feeling like they are "appeasing" someone, or stooping to moronic insults. I surmise thus far that you are a fair debater, and look forward to further talks.

Hello Arnold:

I'm not opposed to the unlimited use of recreational drugs (or more accurately, I don't feel the need to support suppression of the use of recreational drugs) so long as I'm guaranteed that none of the cost of the automatic consequences of drug abuse falls on my wallet. Since that is patently not the case (thank God we don't have socialized medicine here, but the current system whereby the Insured subsidize the Uninsured is bad enough) I am comfortable enough with some form of war on drugs.

Ditto for letting felons walk freely through society at large. Your beliefs here and mine would appear to map to the pre- and post-Giuliani NYC, respectively. Incidents of almost every major form of crime have declined in almost direct proportion to the rate of incarceration, and the recent uptick in the past few years seems to be best explained by the fact that some of the career criminals sentenced under stricter laws in the 80s and 90s are getting out on parole. Perhaps criminals can be reformed--and I'll grant that the current criminal justice system is not the mechanism to accomplish that--but the burden of proof is on you.

"Influencing behavior modification" may be your interpretation of the prison system's primary purpose, but I'll settle for "punishing the wicked" and "protecting the innocent" as the criteria by which I'll measure success.

And back to Dean's original point: I think everyone should just try really, really, really hard to stay out of prison, even if that requires obeying the law.

My observation is that women seem perfectly happy with sexism so long as it's men who get the short end of the stick. It pretty much never fails. Especially when feminists are in the mix.

A woman is as capable of birth control as any man is. Arguably, moreso, since she has more options. But if a woman gets pregnant and a man says, "hey, tough, she should have used birth control," women usually fly into a blind rage.

Yet somehow, these same women feel not the slightest hesitancy about saying the exact same thing to men.

The current state of abortion law makes the man responsible for the woman's choice, if she chooses not to abort. It's that simple. But tough cookies, right? He, in short, is responsible for his sexual behavior, and for hers, while she's responsible only for her own choices. It's called a double standard.

Of course, change is unlikely, since women are always accorded special priviledges in this area. They probably always will be. Still, it would be nice if at least the custody laws were enforced as well as our child-support laws are.

Dean, I like the direction this is going. It's an intriguing growth from the original topic, and I really think it deserves a post of its own. And, no, I'm not complaining, I'd just like to see you discuss the topic of men's rights more fully in one sitting.

So, do you do requests?

Well, getting back on topic...

Imagine a cell designed for 8, with 14 men in it.
This is medium security, as none of the prisoners have been convicted. No ventilation to speak of, and it's summer in central California. No call button, and the guards can't hear what goes on at night in the cell block (converted WWII barracks).

Like Dean, I've been to some Grateful Dead concerts in my day, and ingested a fair quantity of LSD at them. But I got caught in a wonderful little City/County/State/Federal reverse sting operation, where they joyfully set the record for the number of persons arrested at a concert (Sacramento CalExpo, May 92).

We all got sent to the hell hole described above, where I got to see and hear a friend of mine being raped accross the hall while held down by 4 other prisoners.

The guards do NOT care.

And these were the conditions for those "innocent until proven guilty".

Excuse me, guilty until you show the bail money and hire a good attorney, which is the sad reality of our criminal 'justice' system.
It's a plea bargain machine for all but those with enough for a good private attorney.

The second that I was arrested, a little voice inside said that I needed to **love everyone** and take them as a unique person to survive whatever came next.

That, and meditation and books are all that kept me sane.

There is no justice in our country so long as the Drug War continues, and continues to make a mockery of our ideals about due process, justice and human dignity.

I was certainly rehabilitated by the experience, but I believe that is only because of the attitude I approached it with. Seeing and hearing a friend, who was not yet convicted of anything, get brutally raped, made me not want to go back there for ANYTHING. The other prisoners all seemed to want to blame anyone but themselves for where they were.

I have since then never once sold anything illegal, not done anything stronger than pot and diet pills for a bit once for my weight, helped build 3 start up companies, one of which still employs nearly a hundred people, been an executive, and started a consulting company of my own.

And I still can't vote or own a gun, and have to lie about a felony conviction to even rent an apartment (the computer industry doesn't generally care about an LSD conviction, but landlords are not so forgiving).

It is truly a war on people, not a war on drugs.

Jonathan,

In a perfect society, we would not lock up the truly wicked, because we as well as they would have to pay for their transgressions. Instead, I think, we would just ignore them if the wickedness were minor or did not affect the rest of us. Or we would shoot them dead if the wickedness were major and involved a whole lot of others. In other words, shoot the Adolf Hitlers out of hand and ignore or have fun laughing at the Baghdad Bobs.

In any case, it is becoming too expensive to our society to imprison people for purposes of "punishing the wicked". The whole idea is to rehabilitate them to whatever degree possible, with an aim to converting them into jobholders, homeowners, mothers and fathers. In short stakeholders in a well-ordered society, and taxpayers as well. Which spreads out the burden of costs of dealing with the major wicked as opposed to the minor ones.

I too am opposed to unlimited use of recreational drugs. But I do not think that confinement in prison is a efficacious way to impel people to stop using them or to stop them before they even begin. I think that drug rehabilitation would be infinitely cheaper than imprisonment and far less destructive to the user, who is mostly a victim of the drug trade rather than a trafficker profiting from it.

My interest in these matters is pragmatic, Jonathan. Imprisonment accomplishes nothing in stopping the drug traffic. Treatment would reduce the demand side of the trade, and would, if carried out over a longterm, sustained process, might even eliminate the trade by making the market unprofitable.

There is also the question of justice. I read with interest the posting on this thread by David Mercer, with whom, among others, I have had many literate and intelligent discussions on Dean's World. His experiences in a real prison, listening to the screams of his friend being raped by four hardened convicts, would be enough to destroy most people. So my question is this:

Is anal rape by a gang of criminals an appropriate punishment for ingesting LSD at a Grateful Dead concert? Yes or no?

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Arnold raise the heart of the matter.

And also please note that at this facility in rural Sacramento County there were also prisoners in for things as petty as not dealing with traffic tickets for multiple moving violations, and persons incarcerated for 1st degree murder, all mixed together, with no prisoner classification at all for those not yet tried or sentenced.

Bloods and Crips, black gang members and Aryan Nation incorrigibles, all mixed together.

None of which would have existed except for the drug war. If you removed all of the prisoners who had been arrested for victimless crimes, the modern, safe facility in downtown Sacramento would have more than adequate capacity for the rest.

So, is anal rape also appropriate punishment for 3 moving violations?

Oh wait, that guy only got beat up 3 times.

No, David,

None of this is appropriate punishment. Nor is it intelligent use of law enforcement and security resources, which surely must be short supply considering the threats of terrorism this country now faces.

Above all, it is not appropriate use of correctional facilities. I almost hesitate to use the word "corrections" to describe the 3-ring circuses that pass for the administration of some of these government-operated hellholes. And having now given some serious thought to this matter, I would like to see some fundamental reforms. Nobody charged with mere misdemeanors should be locked up at all. And, after a great deal of reflection, I think drug use should should, where possible, be treated as a medical problem and not as a matter for the judicial system. If a crime was truly committed in the case you described, it was on the part of the correctional officers who put traffic offenders into the same cell with first-degree murderers.

David, I am sorry you lost your gun rights over a matter as minor as what you were involved with. These rights are so important to me, that I would almost prefer an early death than to lose them.

That which happened to you is something I would like to see changed, and I wrote just that in my earlier post on this thread. I think that felons should have their civil liberties restored to them -- including the right to keep and bear arms -- if it can be shown that they have that they have earned the right to resume these rights through assumption of the civil responsibilities that go along with them.

---

By the way. I would like to resume a discussion I was having with you about the LDS religion and community, but the thread fell into Dean's weekly the weekly black hole in order to make room for newer topics. I have found some interesting historical materials about the Mormons written by historian Bernard de Voto about 60 years ago.

So, is the email address for comments to The Plain Truth yours, or is used corporatively by all TPT main contributors?

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Arnold and David:

Arnold: as an alternative to summary execution of all offenders, I'm happy to pay for the incarceration of criminals, and happy enough with the democratic process which determines legality/illegality. That's an individual position, which David probably does not share.

Do either of you really believe that drug abuse doesn't affect the non-abusers, or would cease to affect us if recreational drug use were decriminalized?

I grant that an effective war on drugs would concentrate on the demand vs. supply side, for obvious microeconomic reasons. Whether the demand-side focus would more effectively take the shape of rehabilitation or incarceration is up for debate. I'm happy to view any statistics you may have on the effectiveness of rehab.

What I do know is that fewer than 5% of the population commits greater than 80% of the crimes, and I'm certain that the cost of keeping these wealth-destroyers out of circulation is hugely less than the negative impact they have on society when released. A true analysis of the cost would include property values, security systems, insurance rates, police population. I believe the cost of incarceration used to be $70K / year, but it may have gone down since then with economies of scale.

The drug abusers are "victims?" You and David may disagree on that one. I don't think he felt victimized by the drugs so much as by the system.

I'm certainly not suggesting that David's friend's experience is an appropriate punishment for his crime. But it probably qualifies as a natural consequence of willfully and intentionally breaking the democratically-created law of this land.

And let's look at the impact of these consequences on David's own life. David, by your own description you were so horrified that you were effectively "scared straight," and have since amassed a ridiculously awesome set of accomplishments that many of us envy. You mention that you doubt (without knowing) that the experience had the same corrective effect on any of the other prisoners, but what we DO know with certainty is that Clean David freeking rocks, at least in terms of net contributions to society.

If the California Penal System resists the requested changes out of a desire to make prison so horrifying that people will do almost anything to stay out of prison, I think that's a worthy goal, though I'm not qualified to judge the means. From a game theory standpoint, it makes sense to give all potential criminals an unpredictable, very strong deterrent to consider. Spending scarce societal resources to eliminate a deterrent to crime seems counter-intuitive to me. There are worthier causes.

Jonathan, when 90%+ of convictions are due to plea bargaining, and only one public defender in the County even wants to go to trial, I'd say that their ain't no justice. When criminals are let off for informing, and corruption is rampant, there ain't no justice.

I'd also submit that you need to look into the social and economic issues involved in prohibition better before invoking macroeconomics and harm reduction. I'm not denying the negative impact drug abuse can have, but marginalizing large groups of people permanently, who then conveniently can't vote to stop the "War" they have been victimized by, isn't justice.

If you look at the numbers, legalizing would remove the economic incentive to commit violent and property crimes to buy heroin or cocaine.
Nobody robs anyone for weed money, as it's so cheap and isn't addictive like they are ($20 will get you stoned for a week or two every night on pot, but not get you far for even alcohol).

And you're right, the worst wealth destroyers DO need to be kept out of society, but they are the violent and property criminals, many of whom would never have gone down that path were hard drugs legal in this country.

Oh, and while the economy is in a slump, jobs in the computer industry are not so plentiful, and doncha know, regular employers DO seem to care about my past. NASDAQ and several large banks in this hemisphere didn't seem to give a damn during the boom, when they are paying several hundred dollars an hour for consulting, they just care about you getting the job done.

When the crash wiped out the IT consulting industry in the US, I lived in my car for a year, and had to crawl back up by my finger tips, and have been barely hanging onto an apartment since then, none of which is made easier by having a felony conviction following me around.

In down times, I'm no longer a jet setter, just another criminal.

Hi David:

You make a lot of excellent points. I don't have too much to say by way of contradiction, but rather by way of looking at other dimensions of the situation:

I don't think that plea bargaining is a symptom of a lack of justice, any more than I think low electoral turnouts are a symptom of democratic sclerosis. If the plea bargains are negotiated based on how the objective merits of each case map onto similar case precedents, that just looks like efficiency to me. And if the defendant retains his/her right to reject the offer and the public defender is obligated to defend him/her at trial, then I think the defendant is well-served. If the public defender is considered generally incompetent to adequately defend his/her clients, the bar association should disbar the lawyer. All of the corrective mechanisms appear (to my naive eye) to be in place. But they require effort and vigilance by all parties in the system.

If criminals are let off for informing and the information is accurate (an open question) and leads to the successful prosecution of more serious offenders (another open question) then I think this serves the greater good of justice. We have chosen to so restrict our law enforcement officials in their pursuit of evidence that other criminals are frequently the only source of evidence about certain crimes. Society has made this decision because we value our right to privacy, and I think that's a good thing but it's not without its cost. I'd say it's more accurate to say there's "less" justice than "no" justice. "No" justice looks more like Iraq, either pre- or post-Saddam, to me.

You're dead on with the economic analysis, though I think there would still be people robbed to pay for reduced-price drugs, and have known more than a few habitual marijuana users who built such a tolerance that they couldn't get high from a cannabis funeral pyre and switched to heavier stuff. But everyone's physiology is different, so it's tough to generalize.

If you believe in the efficient functioning of the market, and you believe that the majority of drug felons are actually highly employable and productive, economic theory would suggest you could snap up a bunch of ex-convict codeslingers at bargain basement prices and write the next Windows(TM), or at least a few killer applications, selling them at a huge profit. There is a lot of room for more life-simplifying applications to be created. At least that's my belief.

Good luck, in any event.

I can't speak for anyone but myself on the issue of legalization/decriminalization of recreational drug use, but I would be much easier to convince if it was presented by its proponents in the context of eliminating every kind of socialistic support for harmful decisions (economically, with regard to health care, etc.). As is nauseatingly obvious by my repetitiveness, I am a big believer in letting people do whatever they want, so long as:

1) It doesn't harm others, and;
2) I don't have to subsidize the consequences.

In practice, I find very few people wanting both the freedom and the responsibility. You strike me as one who may, but I think you're in the minority. My opinion only.

Jonathan, the plea bargain system is only needed because of the high volume of drug cases piled up. And most public defenders WON'T give you adequate representation at a trial, unless you get a hotshot who is trying to move over to the DA's office.

They do everything they can to get you to accept a cookie cutter plea agreement in most jurisdictions. My public defender wouldn't even subpoena arrest documents from my booking at the concert, where my co-defendant was listed as being arrested.

I found out MUCH later that they were in on the sting, and that that was why there was magically no mention of them in the documents I got when booked into the country jail. The sentences were almost all completely uniform, regardless of the drug in question, the amount, etc. All that mattered was if it was a first offense or not, and whether it was for sales or possession.
And if you got the "bad judge", you got 10-30 days longer than the rest of us.

That's dozens of people all from one concert, all jammed threw the ringer. No one wanted to go to trial, cause if you lost you'd get years, not months. The public defenders made that very, very clear.

And no, most drug felons aren't very employable. And no, I don't have any 'hard data' on the later fates of those I was arrested with, but the typical drug war prisoner doesn't have years of experience with meditation, which is what kept my sanity.

So, what besides legalizing would YOU do to cut down on jailhouse rape? Because more and more men are going to get raped every year in jail, most of whom, regardless of offense, I'm sure wouldn't be crowded in with violent prisoners were the jails not so crowded from the drug war.

And if the courts weren't so crowded from it, violent criminals and theives would get trials and longer sentances, and not the mockery of a practically coerced plea bargain.

David:

I certainly don't disagree that the large volume of drug cases is a factor in the rise of plea bargaining. What recourse do you have if you feel inadequately represented? I would assume you could bring that to the attention of the court, but my experience is limited to "Law and Order," so I don't know.

Do you feel as though the arrest documents the public defender failed to subpoena would have had a material impact on the outcome on the case? At some level, if they had gotten you off despite your guilt, that could be viewed as a miscarriage of justice anyway, but you certainly had a right to the documents. What does the ABA do if not ensure the quality of lawyers? This is where I would target reform efforts, vs. changing the system.

I don't understand what you mean by "they were in on [the sting]" The public defender was? That sounds like a disbarring offense to me.

I have no problem with the idea of much greater punishments for going to trial vs. plea bargaining. That's a standard risk/reward analysis. If they ran it any other way, they'd be idiots.

The prisons get more crowded by increased incarceration only if the rate of increase in prison space lags the rate of inmate population increase. More arrests do not automatically lead to overcrowding, and I personally love the willingness society has shown to increase prison capacity vs. offer undeserved paroles. I would prefer that the law stand in a vaccum. Either an offense warrants punishment and leads to incarceration, or it doesn't and doesn't. I don't think it should be a function of how convenient it is for us to hold a person for their entire sentence.

I honestly don't have any creative ideas regarding how to reduce incidences of prison rape, but that is not my particular jihad. I think that a potential criminal evaluates a given crime opportunity by comparing the expected reward against the expected punishment times the probability of getting caught. I don't believe that an actual formula is calculated, but the principle operates at an instinctive level even for feral cats. If the expected punishment includes an undeterminable but potentially horrifyingly hellish downside, the probability of the crime occurring is correspondingly reduced. So I'm willing to leave the down side there (until a more effective deterrent is devised) and focus energy on making sure that the law itself is just and fairly applied.

It's a nonanswer, but that's my thinking.

I just re-read what I wrote last night, and I wasn't clear in some bits about my PD and the reverse sting dragnet that caught me.

I don't know if the public defenders office was aware of the level of sting opperations involved, but since almost every arrest at that concert was a sting, I have to assume that it was going around the office, which is of course in the same building as the prosecutors.

Of course everyone knew that it was a massive undercover operation, they had video on most suspects. What wasn't generally known (I didn't know until I got out and got filled in by friends) was the level of informant participation. For instance, my friend who fronted me the LSD I had had been busted a few months earlier, and was being pressured into setting other people up, or face life in prison.

My disappearing act codefendant (a friend of my friend) was a minor being used to take people to those who had been given drugs (such as myself) by my friend, and were then arrested.

I'd sworn off selling drugs months before, but was homeless and broke following the Dead, and here pops up an old friend fronting me LSD.

All that was covered up, and the PD wouldn't subpoena my original booking documents, as he was "sure there was nothing to see there".

It's like the DeLorean case, find a desperate person, and put temptation in front of them.

David:

You have a generous spirit if you're still willing to call an informant who set you up in a drug sting a "friend."

I had thought from your previous posts that you were unhappy with society's prosecution of drug users, based on your contention that the overwhelming majority of drug-related criminals in prison were consumers and not sellers. This was at odds with just about everything I've ever seen on TV regarding the differential penalties for consumption vs. distribution, and the elaborate pains dealers take to never have more than X number of ounces on their persons at any given time.

So . . . I thought you would be satisfied if drug sales were still criminalized but usage was decriminalized, something that Arnold and I would disapprove of from an economic efficiency standpoint. But in reality, you were busted for SALE of a controlled substance. I did not understand that before. To my mind, it makes your situation less sympathetic than if you were an addicted user. And if you're an obviously highly intelligent person who has chosen to follow the Dead with no legal means of self-support, I don't know if that qualifies you as "homeless" any more than I deserve that label when backpacking. I associate homelessness with more serious, non-voluntarily-correctable problems. But that's just my personal belief.

So your thesis is that we should only punish the crimes of the nondesperate? I don't think that stands up to close scrutiny nearly as well as your drug-use-as-victimless-crime thesis.

Have a good weekend!

No Johnathan, my thesis is that Prohibition is always socially destructive and creates violence, corruption and is used to further marginalize underclass persons.

In my particular case, I had had a brief (under 6 months) career as a small time LSD dealer in northern california, and had given it up after seeing so many users and dealers of go down nearly a year before my arrest.

I had no intention of selling anything at the Dead show in question, but my former friend offered one of those deals that's hard to refuse, a front with no money down.

Were it not for the desperation for tobacco as a smoker I probably would have turned him down, food was never a problem at a Dead show, but I foolishly performed one of those "oh just this last time" rationalizations.

My argument for legalization is based on the collateral damage to society in the form of violence and corruption, which I got to see up close and personal due to my lapse.

A large percentage of violent and property crimes are commited in this country to buy cocaine and heroin, and there are hard numbers on that. Their prices are inflated over 1000 times compared to actual cost of production because of their black market status. And THAT is why the jails are so crowded, and traffic offenders sometimes get subjected to beatings and rape.

Al Capone was put out of business as soon as alcohol prohibition was repealed.

what happened to this string? we were talking about how women could have a man imprisoned because she felt what he said to her was a form of sexual misconduct. And we are now talking about drugs. I know I'm new to this string but come on people, focus. In this country where the court system shows a bias toward women, it's time we took a stand and let the court system know that we will no longer be trampled upon by them any more. If youre willing to do what ever it takes to have the system see us for who we really are, to say that we are willing to go to any extremes to regain our long forgotten "EQUAL RIGHTS", E mail me and I will link you to a site that is willing to make that stand and speak for MEN everywhere.