Letter
from the Editor: Alexandra Eyle
if the point of the drug war was to save the children, how did it go so wrong?
When New York State passed
the Rockefeller Drug laws in the 1970s, and mandatory minimum sentencing went
into effect across the country in 1986, legislators
argued that these laws would protect our children. No one for a moment dreamed
of the nightmarish effect anti-drug laws would have on families and children:
From
1986 (the year mandatory sentencing was enacted) to 1996, mandatory drug laws
drastically increased the imprisonment of women -– the number of women
sentenced to state prison for drug crimes increased ten-fold, from 2,370 to
23,700. In New York State, the number of women in prison rose 148% from
1985-1990, and across the country, black women are incarcerated at eight times
the rate of white women. Nationally, 828,100 women were either in prison, in
jail, on probation, or on parole by 1995.
Currently,
146,000 American women are behind bars across the country,
and the most serious offense for 40% of these women is the violation of
drug laws. The FBI reports that from 1985 to 1996, female drug arrests increased
by 95% while male drug arrests increased by 55.1%
In
addition, 75 % of inmates are
mothers, and two thirds of their children are under the age of 18 — there
are 250,000 children in America today whose mothers are in prison.
According to Amnesty
International, the number of women incarcerated in prisons and jails in the
U.S.A. is
approximately 10 times more than the number of women incarcerated in Western
European countries, even though Western Europe's combined female population is
about the same size as ours. Indeed, according to a 1999 report by the Justice
Policy Institute, “One Million Nonviolent Prisoners,” women are the
fastest growing and least violent segment of prison and jail populations,
and 85.1% of female jail inmates are behind bars for nonviolent offenses.
Yet
women are the most frequent victims of violence or abuse,
and the majority of incarcerated women have been the victims of violence.
Seventy-eight percent of female inmates report physical or sexual abuse, and
more than half of them knew their attackers, as opposed to 3% of men knowing
theirs. Half of the abuses were reported as rapes. In 1998, the Departments of
Health and Human Services reported that, nationally, 17.7 million American women
had been raped or been the victims of attempted rape; nearly half were under the
age of 18 and 75% knew their attackers.
What
these statistics give us is an overwhelming picture of women as the great
underclass of America. With their mothers incarcerated, the children, too,
become victims.
This
special issue of the Quarterly looks only at a few ways in which our drug
policies are affecting women:
Mary
Barr, a woman who
overcame child abuse and neglect, alcoholism, and crack addiction to found
Motivational Movement, where she is working to change the system and help other
addicts to get and stay clean, is profiled.
Danielle
Metz, a black
woman who wanted nothing more than to be a full-time mom, writes to us as a Guest
Speaker, from her prison cell, where she’s serving three life sentences,
plus 20 years, for conspiracy to sell drugs that were never found.
Dr.
Ira J. Chasnoff,
in an interview, revisits the media’s response to his early research and the
punitive policies that were borne of the media frenzy.
Lynn Paltrow sheds light on a range of policies pertaining to
pregnant women, and offers a sane
alternative. We also review Chasnoff’s latest book, “Understanding the
Drug-Exposed Child: Approaches to Behavior and Learning,” and Jeffrey
Schaler’s book, “Addiction Is a Choice.”
Dr.
Gene Tinelli
writes about the prenatal effects of various drugs, from cocaine to tobacco, on
infants, and advocates for drug policies that don’t punish women and children.
Mikki Norris explains how the Drug War violates international human
rights and destroys families.
In preparing this issue, I’ve concluded that a sane national drug policy would make treatment, including residential treatment programs that focus on the needs of parents and children, available to people who want it. There also would be a wealth of ways to strengthen families, including anger management and parenting classes. And if we want to keep children from abusing drugs and alcohol, we must, as teachers, physicians, neighbors and friends, learn to identify early-warning signs of parental abuse and neglect and find effective ways of keeping children from living out stories like Mary Barr’s. It’s a tall order. We’ll never fill it completely. But surely we can do a better job than we’re doing now. And than we ever did for her.
