A personal view by David Raynes

The background to and an account of the hearing, in London on 5^th February 2008, of evidence to the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. It met to take this evidence on re-classifying cannabis to Class B from C under the UK system.

There is surely hardly an observer of drug politics in the world who does not know that the UK, four years ago, surprisingly downgraded cannabis from B to C. under our A to C classification system of potential harm, (Also used to establish social sanctions against use & trafficking). With only a short debate in parliament, the issue was driven through by Home Secretary David Blunkett (now out of government) who had only weeks before, entered the UK Home Office as the responsible Minister.  The issue was noticed and claimed around the world as a victory for the drug legalisation lobby who clearly thought this was a step on the way to their nirvana of legal dope for all. Such an action would have been unthinkable for Blunkett’s predecessor Jack Straw (still in Government). Perhaps Prime Minister Blair took his eye off the domestic ball; bogged down over Iraq, he gave Blunkett his way while apparently we are now told, “having real doubts” himself. Thus are we governed.

The downgrading reverberated around and beyond the English speaking world; such is the power of the internet.  Some lobbyists lied about it, saying the UK had made cannabis legal. It had not, it had messed up, confusing the anti-use message and, strangely, had to put up the penalties for trafficking all Class C drugs because Blunkett had apparently not appreciated his proposed action held the danger of making Cannabis trafficking a minor crime compared to tobacco trafficking. Politically unsustainable. He swears now to this writer he had no external influences on him. Foreign readers may not know he is blind. Does his denial of external influence during his arrival briefing and subsequently before his announcement, sound credible?

Cannabis downgrading (and ultimately legalisation) had been heavily pushed in the UK, since the mid 90s, by a small but noisy, largely London based, media lobby. The downgrading and even legalisation issue was taken to the heart of an educated elite, perhaps fearful their kids might get arrested for pot smoking and not overly concerned about the wider social consequences of cannabis use, especially on the socially disadvantaged.

The statutory body that advises government on drugs, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) had also advanced the downgrading issue. A report from the “Police Foundation” (not much to do with the Police) led by Baroness Runciman also contributed to this new golden age of pro-pot haze and muddled thinking. A current Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London, then a senior Policeman, made his own timely contribution by announcing the relaxing of the policing of cannabis the day before a pro-pot march. The scene was set. South London lapsed into a drugs no-mans land of dealers in all illegal substances. Great work! Really helpful to anxious parents. A real mess of confusing signals.

A couple of oddball Chief Constables added their pro-drugs bit and in all the UK parliamentary parties there were similar odd (but minority) contributors to the general nonsense. None of these people thinking through exactly how this idea would further damage Britain’s already bad drug using culture. Rank and file Police Officers, the key top scientists and many experienced drug workers, of course opposed the changes but were ignored. David Blunkett astonishingly refused to see six top scientists & doctors who strongly opposed his downgrading.

The UK continued to develop one of the biggest drug problems in Europe. We have difficulties with all drugs, legal or illegal. In a separate earlier action in 1999, focussing on “the drugs that cause most harm” (I always wonder who thought up that phrase), UK Customs had stopped targeting cannabis imports and the UK was flooded with the stuff, much of it Moroccan Cannabis Resin and according to users, of poor quality. The price after 2000 dropped as supplies increased, “Blunkett’s Blunder” in downgrading took effect three years later.  “Age of first use” dropped alarmingly as did “age of first regular use”. Reportedly, kids–often pre teen were/are using cannabis on the way to school, at school and on their way home. The effect of this is that these kids become un-teachable, discipline breaks down, they fail academically, some drop out of education, they are forever damaged. Many, too many, become mentally ill, some diagnosed psychotic, others below formal diagnosis as mentally ill, are nevertheless unable to really contribute to society and cause huge distress to their families. The unemployment or mentally disabled register looms for many, their jobs taken by educated hard-working Poles and others from Eastern Europe. The government becomes seriously worried. Alarm bells ring in the Department of Social Security and in the Department of Health, both now picking up the pieces of the very wrong Home Office policy. The downgrading policy is looking expensive and socially damaging.

Out on the streets, the imported poor quality cannabis resin was gradually replaced by home grown and Dutch “sinsemilla” or “skunk” cannabis, this getting progressively stronger but strength alone being only one of several contributing factors to damage.. Frequency of use and age of first use is also important, and, in the view of this writer, so is the different ratio of THC to CBD in this new fresh, home grown “super-weed”. The belief is that CBD moderates the effect of THC on the brain.

A new Home Secretary, (Blunkett having left government), took over and anxiously asked the ACMD for advice –yet again, on cannabis classification. The ACMD resorted to “return-to-sender” for this enquiry after a half-hearted review where, according to inside information, there was no vote merely a decision by the Chairman, Sir Michael Rawlins and a round the table “chat”. Dissent in the ACMD, is not encouraged our spies tell us; the ACMD members, all of them, have only negligible knowledge of the drugs market. The self-selection of new members keeps out those who oppose liberalisation so plainly, the internal debate is and can only be, very one-sided.  Perhaps the Home Office should ensure more balance?

No change then, the cannabis problem for teenagers and pre-teens gets worse. In 2007 the spin doctors and even Ministers take comfort in figures from the British Crime Survey which shows a slight reduction in cannabis use at ages 16 to 24. No one other than this writer mentions this is simply because cannabis for older young people is becoming unfashionable and gets replaced by cocaine, crack-cocaine and (particularly) gross & physically damaging alcohol consumption. Government has allowed 24 hour alcohol licensing despite widespread public concern.  Cocaine use in the UK has also zoomed up. The infection spreads to Ireland, that society develops a similar drug habit.

The regular discovery of organised Cannabis Farms, a new phenomenon in the UK (although known elsewhere, for example in Canada) and an entire new industry in the UK since “Blunkett’s Blunder”, goes unexplained, Cannabis use is down we are emphatically told. When this writer challenges this and points to the farms, one joker (A Professor and a pro-pot lobbyist) suggests the UK is a substantial exporter of cannabis. A statement that defies belief, there is no evidence of such a thing, not substantial anyway. Things are spiralling out of control. Britain is a nation of sick young people; drugs of all sorts are cheaper than ever, youth is more affluent than ever. Prime Minister Tony Blair, architect of “Blair’s Britain” and now being blamed for “Blair’s Feral Youth” is forced from office in the autumn of 2007, largely over Iraq and his handling of the Middle East but his party and most other people are basically just sick of him. This writer tells the media that the cannabis market has widened and deepened, the totality of use is higher. If it is not, where is the output of the cannabis farms going?

A new broom and a largely new group of Government Ministers take over in autumn 2007. Gordon Brown as new Prime Minister is a dour Scot, son of a church Minister he sets a different social tone to Blair and just maybe, has more integrity and social conscience. Consideration is suddenly being given to abandoning plans for giant casinos; 24 hour drinking is being reviewed, so is cannabis policy. Brown appoints a new Home Secretary, Jacquie Smith, first woman in that position. She is a self confessed experimenter with pot at University but all credit to her, she and Brown, together, take a different tone on drugs issues. She is after all a mum and mums (good for them) are driving a new national wave of sustained protest about kids being mentally damaged by pot. Brown signals he is minded to re grade cannabis to where it was, back to Class B, ending the confusion and sending clear messages about the harms. Smith refers the issue once again, back to the ACMD. The implication, clear beyond any doubt, is that Brown and Smith want, and will have, cannabis re-graded even if the ACMD do not support it. On the fringes of the ACMD there are dark mutterings about resignations if their views are ignored. Some observers may think that would be a good thing.

So we arrive at 5^th February 2008. The ACMD is forced; reluctantly it seems, to hold some of its hearings in public (Why not all in public you might ask-Parliament is after all in public). It arranges a one day hearing in the City of London. Public access is limited because numbers are limited and prior application and approval are needed.  Questions to witnesses by members of the public are strictly forbidden though there is a short public comment/question session at the end.

Chairman Sir Michael Rawlins runs a tight ship, ACMD members call him “Sir”, he calls them by their first names. Very few ACMD members ask questions. Of those that do the most active seem to do it to show how clever they are, not, particularly, to illuminate the real issues. We get no indication or feel for what most members think at all. There is a pre-occupation with the penalties for drugs use & possession, not the science and social science of harm-potential and the actuality in the country. Arguably the very things that should most concern this committee. Astonishing.

Early witnesses from the Forensic Science Service and GW Pharmaceuticals confirm that herbal cannabis seizures (home grown) in the UK, are gradually getting much stronger in THC and that this new form of the drug contains hardly any CBD, leaving the effects of strong THC unconstrained. Resin we are told, long the staple of the UK market, is declining in market share and historically had almost equal amounts of THC & CBD. More work is needed on the issue of CBD but it is plain that by selection, a much higher THC-containing product is gradually taking over the market. It will continue to do so. Other academic witnesses on the potential mental health effects tell us that CBD may be “anti-psychotic”. The absence of CBD may therefore be aggravating the mental damage from the stronger THC. The new selected cannabis may be two or three times stronger, certainly not the 10 or 20 times of the tabloid press and even some over zealous commentators on my side of the debate. Cannabis is not homogeneous and techniques are available in the market to sieve it and extract a higher THC product. The mental health ill effects are more marked in young men; by 2010 cannabis use will be implicated in 25% of schizophrenia cases. Professor Robin Murray has spoken of 1500 cases a year, very expensive to treat and of course this is only the clinically diagnosed.

The most telling early witnesses are from “SANE” & “Rethink”, both mental health charities. Marjorie Wallace from SANE talks of the “confusion about legality & safety” and that cannabis is implicated in 80% of 1^st episode psychosis. She says, “Only re-classification can counter the mixed messages”. There is then, an immediate and astonishing outburst from Chairman Sir Michael, angry, venomous, red-faced. (This is a really serious scientific approach, observe and learn I think to myself?) He barks out, “Are you really wanting people to go to prison for five years for possession”? 

Any minor confidence one might have had in a dispassionate scientific appraisal, led by Sir Michael at least, surely evaporated. His remarks are nonsense of course and misleading of the ignorant. Sentencing guidelines and historical fact show that imprisonment for just personal use possession, of any illegal drug, hardly occurs in the UK. Why bother with the facts when you are Chairman of such an important meeting, advising government, confident, despite the evidence, that you know best? Does the Home Office know he is behaving like this?

The position of “Rethink” is truly hard to fathom. They accept all the harms of cannabis, indeed they tell us about them, yes they are getting worse but to them, re-classifying so that the public can understand this better, is astonishingly not important. To this observer they seem to have been “got at” by someone, so perverse is their position. Is their funding being threatened if they take a more robust view?  Their position is surely odd especially seen in the light of the remarks by Wallace. This observer smells something very wrong indeed. They are in the same business as SANE, or ought to be. Just what is going on?

Professor Louis Appleby, National Director of Mental Health for the Department of Health gives an impressive presentation, he is clear about the mental harm, we hear of patient suicides and homicides, figures trip out, “68% had taken cannabis”, we (as a society) are “guilty of complacency” (about cannabis), “causal factor”, “benefits from re-classification”. “health perspectives” and much more. Professor Appleby is hugely convincing. He is in no doubt at all that re-classification is needed. One is encouraged that here, at last, we have a public servant being so clear about what is needed and why.

Another presentation about the physical harms is convincing that in cannabis there are all the harms of tobacco and more. Talk of head & throat cancers, early emphysema etc. A second presentation about cannabis & driving illuminates the fact that cannabis is now by far the most common drug found in those arrested under the Road Traffic Act. Cannabis influenced drivers exhibit “poor road tracking” & “divided attention”.

Debra Bell of the “Talking about Cannabis” mum’s pressure group then speaks, together with another mum, an anonymous Barrister, whose own family life, like Debra’s has been severely and permanently damaged by teenage cannabis use. Promising young people damaged mentally and permanently, we are told. Educational under-achievement, wasted years. We are told of the thousands of hits on Debra’s website, the families feeling “let down” by government and the ACMD, the widespread feeling that cannabis use has become acceptable and that parents and teachers were undermined by Blunkett’s downgrading.  Debra tells of the phone calls, parents at their wits-end, desperate and helpless in the face of kids who say cannabis is not so bad, “the government downgraded, it must be OK”. Some kids who even think it is legal. These mums must really worry Prime Minister Brown. These are articulate and educated people, they are not going to give up. They are also voters. These are the people we need to take the campaign against cannabis use forward. They bring a new focus to the battle.

M/s Cindy Burnett. Representing the Magistrates Association & Youth Courts. She is very convincing, she and colleagues are “worried about the message”, “downgrading sent the wrong message”, “caused confusion”. “unnecessary”, “poor effect on health”, “increased addiction”, “ youthful “addiction to cannabis”, “downgrading had a bad effect”, “shoplifting driven by drug addiction” (cannabis), “wrong in principle”, “badly handled”, “downward spiral”, need for Youth courts to be supportive. All strong stuff. The ACMD listen in silence, are they taking it in? Who knows?

A few government apparatchiks from the Home Office talk about their wonderful publicity campaign, they show some clips, fancy indeed but have they worked? How could these adverts turn back the bad effect of downgrading? Like swimming against a strong current. Such stuff keeps people in work but will probably have little effect.

The next speaker is Professor Simon Lenton from the National Drug Research Institute of Australia, his presence confuses, just why is he, particularly him here? I notice he pops up later in the programme again on behalf of The Beckley Foundation, (run by our disgraced ex Deputy Drugs Czar Mike Trace who resigned from the UN when exposed as linked with the George Soros inspired legalisation campaign and “Open Society”). I wonder who has paid Lenton’s fare, was it George? He can afford it. I certainly hope it was not UK public money.

Again, I ponder just why his presence is allowed by Sir Michael.

Lenton is badly briefed about the UK debate and absolutely confused; he addresses us on “The impact of the legislative options for Cannabis”. He seems to think that the lobby against cannabis and for re-classification in the UK is from people who want to “lock users up”; he is more concerned about the social sanctions than about the adverse effects. He does not appear to understand that those who want cannabis upgraded, re-graded to where it historically was, are quite prepared to examine different social sanctions, we know, everyone knows, the UK cannot arrest its way out of our drug problem.  Does he not know the pressure is about putting cannabis back where it belongs? To send a signal about the real harms. To start to change the damaging culture created around use, by the downgrading.

Is Lenton a closet legaliser cloaked in fine words, hiding his real intentions? I “Google” Lenton when I get home and check my files. Yes I thought I had heard of him from Australian friends. As I suspected, keywords, legalisation, Lindesmith, International Harm reduction, support for changes to the UN Drug Conventions etc, need I go on? That and the link with Trace tell me enough.

Does Sir Michael Rawlins understand this chap is a covert pro pot lobbyist? Does the Home Office know the witnesses have been rigged like this?

Steve Rolles from Transform, the UK’s main drug legalisation lobby group (for legalising of all drugs) speaks to us. I know him well and away from this subject can enjoy his company. He is a bright guy. His thunder has been stolen by Lenton he complains! Yes Steve we are having views like yours laid on pretty thick are we not? Is this deliberate? Is Sir Michael rigging all this stuff, does he understand it? If not him just who is rigging it? Legalisation is not up for discussion any more so just why does Transform get a slot (Debra Bell nearly did not!). Steve though admits “Cannabis is more harmful than we thought”. Well more harmful than you thought Steve, my view has been consistent since I met my first pot-heads in the 60s. My allies have always said Blunkett got it wrong, indeed the World Health Organisation indicated the mental harms of pot in its 1997 report.   Rolles advises the ACMD to concentrate on a “Scientific Harm Assessment”. Yes, I can live with that; as long as they take in all harm not just harm to the individual. Yes and they should remember that defining the social penalties for use or trafficking are not what they (the ACMD) are about, leave that to others. Rawlins passion about that penalty issue nags at me.

Do the ACMD silent members (maybe most of them) know they are being manipulated? Again, does the Home Secretary know about this? This loading the witnesses with legalisers when that is not on any agenda is surely verging on the corrupt. No wonder they want to keep out those of a different view. I reflect that it is apparent there are at least two other days of private hearings, just who are this group listening to then?  Would a “Freedom of Information” request flush it out? Can Jacquie Smith just ask? Will she? Perhaps, I muse, she will if she gets a copy of my note.

The penultimate speaker is Simon Byrne Assistant Chief Constable Merseyside Police. He is the Association of Chief Police Officers lead on cannabis. He is a reassuring and sensible figure, ACPO have changed their view, they are seeing the problems with youngsters on the ground, and, picking up the pieces. He is also not interested in locking youngsters up; he wants early intervention, guidance to youngsters and strong signals sent out that use is potentially very damaging. Byrne tells us there have been 2000 cannabis farms found in England & Wales in the last few years since downgrading, that this is a huge new criminal industry since “Blunketts Blunder” (though he does not call it that). Illegal immigrants, often Vietnamese are involved; it is taking up lots of police time. UK based readers may remember downgrading was partly sold as saving police time.  Byrne speaks of confused public views on cannabis; he and his colleagues are now strongly for re-classification to B. Re-classification would reinforce the perceptions of harm. Is anyone listening?

Next witness is Lenton again, this time on behalf of Beckley Foundation.  “Is cannabis use a contributory cause of psychosis”? He is reading a presentation prepared by Wayne Hall & Robin Room.  Yes it is a cause, and more, 1 in 10 users become dependent. Really? Age of first use is important. Well we agree. We just do not agree on a part of the solution, telling the public the truth by classifying the cannabis in the right place.

There is a brief open forum, I manage to chide Lenton for his ignorance about the reasons behind the desire for re classification, I speak about parents and supporting them, telling the truth about cannabis, there is applause from some of the public.  An ACMD member says they are not forgetting the individual sad cases they have heard about (from the mums), he looks at me, he is, I think, defensive, a man with a conscience. I remind the ACMD that Robin Murray’s 1500 schizophrenia cases a year are the tip of an iceberg, there are a quarter of a million people under 35 unable to work and claiming sickness benefits through mental illness, often associated with drug use.  There are thousands of others not in the statistics because their illness is not clinically diagnosed; the prisons are full of those who are said to be mentally ill.

A few other speakers, first a mum, then a legalise cannabis advocate, and more, it comes to an end. It is over. Lenton follows me and speaks to me outside. He is uneasy and edgy.  We debate changing the UN conventions, he wants it, I do not. The best kept international conventions of all I say. Their strength is in the fact that everyone keeps to them. I know but he appears not to, that the UK Government has explicitly said it wishes no change in the conventions. He wants “more freedom for States to do their own thing”. What are those things I say, what can states not do that you want them to do? We in the UK have prescribed heroin for years to a minority of users, the British system. He struggles to answer. He wants the Dutch to be able to deal with and control, (legitimise he means), their cannabis growers. Why I ask? Do neighbours want that? Does he not understand that one European country can not do that independently of the rest? Do the Dutch, most of them, even want that? (We know from an opinion poll that 70% do not want it). I remind him that Dutch drug policy has made the Netherlands, which is a first world country and economy, have a third-world drugs manufacturing, warehousing and distribution problem. Astonishing levels of drugs based criminality feeding ATS (amphetamine type substances) to the whole world, including Australia. . He has no other ideas when challenged. He is plainly not used to being properly challenged. Why is someone with his views here, in this meeting, priming people who are going to advise our government? Who invited him?

As I travel home, I reflect, we have heard very strong messages about the harms of cannabis, is the ACMD about to change its position? I very much doubt it. They seem to be set in their ways, closed off to the harms, controlled tightly by Rawlins, most of them not taking part in the debate. I remember the question “do users mix cannabis with tobacco”. Quite extraordinary, he is in another world.

We have though, I think, seen the cannabis legalisation argument holed below the waterline; they will keep trying but that legalisation debate is surely over in the UK. If it is really over here perhaps it will be over everywhere else. What happens in the UK is of enormous influence because of the English language and the Internet.

Will UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Jacquie Smith re classify cannabis even if the ACMD is not with them? Yes probably. They will have the support of most MPs; the Conservative parliamentary opposition is supporting it. Even some important Liberal Democrats including the then leader (our third party) who have historically been weak and wrong on drug policy have been seen at Debra Bell’s meetings, that is really good. They are also getting the cannabis harm message.  Drug Policy is best when all parties are in broad agreement. Britain’s drug policy failure can I think, be tracked back to the breaking of that unanimity in the mid 90s.

Prime Minister Brown has “made his views clear” on cannabis, he said that this week at “Prime Ministers Questions” in the House of Commons. Brown has widely been accused by his opponents of dither and “government by review”, of putting off decisions. On this I think, based on the evidence, he means business.

David Raynes.

Member. International Task force on Strategic Drug Policy

http://www.itfsdp.org/members.php

Executive Councillor National Drug Prevention Alliance UK

February 2008

HIGH POINT, N.C. — For over three months, police investigated more than 20 dealers operating in this city’s West End neighborhood, where crack cocaine was openly sold on the street and in houses. Police made dozens of undercover buys and videotaped many other drug purchases.
They also did something unusual: they determined the “influentials” in the dealers’ lives — mothers, grandmothers, mentors — and cultivated relationships with them. When police felt they had amassed ironclad legal cases, they did something even more striking: they refrained from arresting most of the suspected dealers.
In a counterintuitive approach, police here are trying to shut down entire drug markets, in part by giving nonviolent suspected drug dealers a second chance. Their strategy combines the “soft” pressure from families and community with the “hard” threat of aggressive, ready-to-go criminal cases. While critics say the strategy is too lenient, it has met with early success and is being tried by other communities afflicted with overt drug markets and the violence they breed.
Overt drug markets — street-corner dealing, drug houses, and the like — constitute one of the worst scourges of poor communities. Such markets foment violent clashes between dealers, as well as robbery by addicts desperate for drug money. Property values suffer. Businesses and families move out — or avoid moving in. Many residents who remain feel under siege. Police often rely on sweeps — mass arrests of street-level dealers — to eradicate drug-related crime. But those rarely provide more than short-term relief. In High Point, police believe that the combination of extensive investigation of the entire market and community involvement has helped solve the problem.
In May 2004, after accumulating evidence in the West End, police chief James Fealy invited 12 suspected dealers to a meeting at the police station, with a promise that they wouldn’t be arrested that night. Encouraged by their “influentials,” nine showed up.
In one room, they met with about 30 clergy, social workers and other community members who confronted them with the harm they were doing, implored them to stop dealing, and offered them help. The suspects, however, “were slouching in their seats and one guy even seemed to be dozing off,” recalls Don Stevenson, pastor of a local congregation, the First Reformed United Church of Christ. “Their attitude was, ‘This is just another program and it will blow over.’”
Then the alleged dealers moved to a second room where they encountered a phalanx of law-enforcement officials: police, a district attorney, an assistant U.S. attorney, and representatives of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and others. Around the room hung poster-size photos of crack houses that had been the dealers’ headquarters. In front of each alleged dealer was a binder, laying out the evidence against him or her. There were even arrest warrants, lacking only the signature of a judge.
The law-enforcement officials made an ultimatum: stop dealing or go to jail. Several suspected dealers with violent records had already been arrested and were facing maximum charges. The same fate, officials emphasized, awaited anyone in the room who returned to dealing drugs. The district attorney promised to seek the maximum possible sentences, and the assistant U.S. attorney threatened to bring federal charges, which, he stressed, don’t allow for parole. Police from surrounding areas warned them against trying to relocate operations, noting that their names were flagged on statewide law-enforcement computers.
Rev. Stevenson recalls that the alleged dealers “seemed to be paying a lot more attention.”
The West End street drug market closed “overnight” and hasn’t reopened in more than two years, says Chief Fealy, who was “shocked” at the success. High Point police say they have since shut down the city’s two other major street drug markets, using the same strategy.
Police in neighboring Winston-Salem, N.C., as well as Newburgh, N.Y., have deployed the strategy with success, and word is spreading. Encouraged by the National Urban League, which wants to see the approach replicated nationwide, police departments in Tucson, Ariz., Providence, R.I., Kansas City, Mo., and elsewhere are gearing up to try it.
“It’s the hottest thing in drug enforcement,” says Mark A. R. Kleiman, a University of California, Los Angeles professor who specializes in illicit drug issues and isn’t involved in the project.
Some police and prosecutors object to the approach.
“Why not slam ‘em from the beginning and forget this foolishness?” says Karen Richards, county prosecutor in the Fort Wayne, Ind., area. The Urban League tried to convince her and the Fort Wayne police to try the strategy, but Ms. Richards didn’t support it. She draws a distinction between addicts, who she believes should get social support, and dealers, who she believes deserve incarceration. “Drug dealers are drug dealers,” she says. “They won’t have an epiphany and end up as model citizens.”
In Winston-Salem, many officers at first dubbed the initiative “hug-a-thug,” though few do so now that they’ve seen it in practice.
In High Point, the West End neighborhood had been a major drug market for almost 15 years, with 16 known crack houses operating at the start of the initiative. A traffic jam began almost every afternoon, as buyers, many destined for homes in the suburbs, converged on the area seeking crack, according to residents and police.
Charlie Simpson, who owns and operates a radiator-repair shop in the West End, says he frequently saw drug dealers “on all four corners, selling drugs out of their pockets.” The dealing drove away business “because women were afraid to come, men didn’t want to bring their wives, plus they didn’t want to leave their car overnight.”
The neighborhood of modest clapboard bungalows became the city’s crime capital. Lucille Dennis, 89, who has lived in the West End for half a century, says that before the initiative, she suffered three break-ins within a year and a half, and she stopped sitting on her porch for fear of getting robbed.
After the West End initiative, violent crime — defined as murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, prostitution, sex offenses, and weapons violations — dropped. More than two years later, violent crime remains more than 25% lower in the area, according to police statistics. Since the initiative, there hasn’t been a single murder or rape reported in the West End. “I don’t know exactly how to phrase it,” Mrs. Dennis says, “but you just don’t see as many people riding around doing nothing.”
It isn’t clear how well such an approach would work in big cities, which have much higher absolute numbers of crimes. High Point has about 90,000 residents and Winston-Salem has 190,000. In Kansas City, a city of about 500,000, Police Chief James Corwin says, “Will it work in Kansas City? I don’t really know.” His police department has almost finished the undercover investigation of a drug market it has targeted.
The initiative hasn’t eradicated illegal drug use — and it doesn’t aim to. “This is not a war on drugs,” says Chief Fealy. Rather, he says, the goal is to shut down overt drug markets because “street-level dope-dealing is what drives a significant amount of crime.”
The police had been trying to drive dealers out of the West End for years. “We were actually doing a sting every month in [West End] making dozens of arrests,” says High Point Assistant Police Chief Marty Sumner. “But the market persisted.”
It’s a pattern seen nationwide. In a report published last year by the American Enterprise Institute, authors David Boyum and Peter Reuter point to government statistics that show arrests per dollar of cocaine and heroin sold in the U.S. soared tenfold from 1981 to 2001. Moreover, the percentage of arrests that led to incarceration also shot up; in 2001 more than half the inmates in federal prisons were convicted of drug crimes, up from just 5% in 1981. Yet, during that same two-decade period, the street price of cocaine and heroin, measured in constant dollars, dropped by two-thirds, suggesting it isn’t more difficult to deal. Indeed, the authors estimated that the risk of arrest per individual cocaine sale is less than one in 15,000.
When police do sweep in, Chief Fealy says, they often capture “targets of opportunity” — dealers who are easy to nab. Hardened dealers expect dragnets, so they rarely conduct sales themselves or have significant amounts of drugs in their possession.
Drug dragnets can actually worsen the problem, because some residents resent the heavy-handed tactics, which can inflame racial tensions. Many community members “wonder whose side are the police on,” says Janet Zobel of the National Urban League. Either out of a sense of futility or suspicion, many residents stop cooperating with the police.
The High Point strategy was the brainchild of David Kennedy, a 48-year-old professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In the 1990s, when he was at Harvard University, Mr. Kennedy helped develop Boston’s anti-gang strategy, a community-involvement approach credited with drastically reducing violent crime.
But the drug initiative was a much harder sell. Mr. Kennedy says he had been trying for more than five years to convince police departments across the country to try it. When Mr. Kennedy first approached Winston-Salem, “We all told him he was crazy,” says Police Chief Patricia Norris. Mr. Kennedy says he would ask, “When do you think what you’re doing now is going to start working?”
Chief Fealy took to the idea the first time he heard it in 2003. He came to High Point from Austin, Texas, where he had been assistant chief and commanded the security detail for then-Gov. George W. Bush.
Before his job interview in High Point, Mr. Fealy drove around the city and was struck by the open drug dealing. “It was just so blatant and in-your-face,” he says. Poring through crime statistics, he saw “well over 60% of our homicides were directly drug-related, and almost 100% of our person-on-person robberies.” He decided to give Mr. Kennedy’s idea a try.
First, police crunch data to find the “hot spots” most plagued by violent and drug-related crime. Then they engage in months of undercover research to understand the local drug market and identify the players — big and small. Police are accustomed to spending months undercover only to nab a major criminal, such as an organized-crime boss. “So putting three months’ work into investigating 20 corner rock dealers” normally would be considered a waste of time, Assistant Chief Sumner says.
But there is a payoff. “A market is something that requires a large number of actors,” says Mr. Reuter, who is an economist as well as an illicit-drugs expert. “If can you can get all the actors out, you can disrupt the system.”
Randy Dejournette, one of the alleged dealers invited to come to the second-chance meeting at the police station in 2004, says “everybody’s gone” from the streets in the West End — and that’s one reason he says he doesn’t deal now. “I’m not going to go out there by myself and sit on the corner and look dumb.”
The High Point police knew who were the lookouts, the runners, the petty dealers and the big wheels. Analyzing the overall market led them to suppliers they might not have found otherwise. Assistant Chief Sumner points to Kevin Cotton, a six-foot-two man with a tattoo that read “thug life,” who was a major source of drugs in a neighborhood targeted by police. An informant told them that he not only supplied dealers, but robbed and intimidated them. He “controlled the market,” Mr. Sumner says. But because he didn’t live in the area, “we probably never would have focused on him.” Police made enough undercover buys to warrant federal charges, then arrested Mr. Cotton because they felt his record was too violent for him to be offered a second chance. He’s now serving 20 years in federal prison.
Arresting violent offenders is one key to making the initiative work. It removes the dominant actors in the market and sets a powerful example. But the other key is that police refrain from arresting suspects who haven’t become hardened, violent criminals. These are often young people — Mr. Dejournette, for example, was 19 when he was invited to the second-chance meeting. For them, police try to implement a communitywide intervention, choreographed to send three clear messages: If they return to dealing, they’ll go to jail; their community will help them turn their lives around but won’t tolerate drug crime any longer; and the police and community are working together to combat dealing.
At the second-chance meeting, police lay out their evidence in a deliberately theatrical way. The Winston-Salem police edited hours of undercover surveillance footage into a short video that showed each suspect making at least one sale. “Raise your hand when you see yourself committing a felony,” the prosecutor told the suspects, according to two people who were there. They started raising their hands, and “that was a thing of beauty,” police captain David Clayton recalls. “They knew we had ‘em.”
Alleged dealers are told that they have been put on a special list. “Every one of my assistants has your name,” the district attorney told the suspects at the West End meeting. “And if they don’t prosecute you as aggressively as they can, I’ll fire ‘em.” Even the public defender — who would likely represent them in court — warned that the cases were so tight there would be virtually nothing he could do to help them.
Immediate enforcement bolsters that message. The three suspected dealers who didn’t attend the West End community meeting were arrested the next day. One person who attended the meeting but tried to sell drugs days later was also arrested. Police and community groups advertised the arrests by posting fliers throughout the neighborhood with pictures of the suspects.
The threat of going to jail is coupled with a message of support from locals. Jim Summey, pastor of the West End’s English Road Baptist Church and a leader in the community’s anticrime crusade, sums up the message: “We are against what you’re doing, but we’re for you.”
Mr. Dejournette recalls, “We wasn’t expecting that….It did make an impression on me.”
So did something deeply personal: the fact that his mother, Annette Dejournette, was, in her words, “disappointed,” “ashamed” and “hurt” by her son’s actions. She convinced him to attend the meeting even though he had been afraid it was a ploy to arrest him.
Ms. Dejournette works as a clerk in a thrift shop. Money is tight, and often the electricity or phone will get cut off, her son says. “Momma be sitting back crying and stressing, and that make me want to go back outside [on the streets] and really do something to stop my momma from crying, but she the one who talks me out of it.”
The fact that the police are giving nonviolent dealers a second chance has encouraged community cooperation. West End residents have been increasingly calling police to report minor offenses, such as truancy or drunkenness. Ms. Dejournette says she went up to several police officers and city officials and “thanked them for trying to help my son.”
The Winston-Salem neighborhood where the approach was launched last year has proved tougher. The area, centered on the Cleveland Avenue Homes housing project, has fewer community institutions, such as churches, than West End does. Turnover in its public housing is extremely high. Mattie Young, 78, president of the Cleveland Avenue Homes residents’ council for almost 18 years, says the initiative eradicated open drug dealing during the first four months. But since then, she says, it has begun to creep back, especially at night.
Police captain David Clayton says that much of the new dealing may be due to one “very dangerous individual” recently identified by residents, whom police are seeking. Still, comparing the year before the initiative to the year after, major property crimes, such as robbery and burglary, dropped by 35%, according to police figures.
In the three neighborhoods where High Point has implemented the initiative, a total of 40 alleged dealers attended the second-chance meetings. Since then, six have been arrested for dealing. Another 10 have been arrested for various other crimes, from robbery to possession of marijuana. The rest — 24 out of 40 — have stayed clear of the law, police say.
After a dispute with his boss, Mr. Dejournette lost a job with the city parks department. Now, he says, “I fill out applications, but I never get that call back.” He works odd jobs, many through a brother who does construction, but he doesn’t make the $200 a day he says he made running errands for dealers. In April, Mr. Dejournette was arrested but not charged for a nondrug offense, so he is “teetering on the edge,” as Assistant Chief Sumner puts it.
Latisha Fisher, 32, of Winston-Salem, says she had been dealing drugs on and off since she was 15. After going to a community meeting and seeing herself on a police undercover videotape, she took her second chance. Her first job was at a fast-food restaurant. The pay: $6.50 an hour. “I toughed it out” for eight months, she says. “My church and family helped me.” This summer, she landed a job on an assembly line manufacturing earth excavators, making $8.50 per hour.
Yon Weaver, a High Point city employee who helps ex-offenders or suspects find jobs, says only 10 to 15 companies in the area are willing to hire people convicted of a crime. Of the 40 suspected dealers called in to the community meetings, about 10 contacted his office for assistance. He knows three have found jobs. Some suspected dealers have simply dropped out of sight. Police say they don’t think dealers merely relocated, because no new drug hot spots have emerged since High Point’s three markets closed.
Rev. Stevenson says the alleged dealers “are still God’s people, and I want them to do well and have productive, law-abiding lives.” But noting that two murders took place within a block of his church before the initiative, he doesn’t gauge the effort’s success by whether dealers turn their lives around.
“It sounds a little ugly,” he says, “but my first priority is the community.”

By MARK SCHOOFS

Source: WallStreetJournal online. Sept. 27th 2006

A Nation Descends into Violence

By Mathieu von Rohr

The Mexican government has been using the army to fight the nation’s drug cartels for about four years. It isn’t working. Some critics say the army is part of the problem, even if the occasional mission removes a kingpin. But President Felipe Calderón has no one else to trust.
Ivana García didn’t flee when two headless bodies were found in front of the city hall, nor did she leave when a body without arms or legs was hanging above a downtown square. But when fighting erupted on the street in front of her house, when mercenaries working for the drug cartels began firing their Kalashnikovs from armored vehicles, and when house-to-house skirmishes went on for hours, as if Ciudad Mier were a town in Afghanistan, not bordering the United States, she had no choice but to flee. In fact, almost the entire population, about 6,000 people, left Ciudad Mier. When they realized there was no one to protect them — no government, no army — they packed their belongings and left their homes.
Ciudad Mier used to be an inconspicuous Mexican municipality on the Rio Grande River, consisting of a colonial center and a few rectangular blocks of houses. Now it is known throughout the country as a ghost town — one of those symbolic places that exist all over Mexico. Each of these towns can tell the story of a nation descending into violence.
Horrific, but Commonplace
One of them is Ciudad Juárez, where more than 3,000 murders were committed this year alone, making it the most violent city in the world. Criminals battle each other in broad daylight in the resort town of Acapulco. In the village of Praxedis, a 20-year-old woman became police chief because no one else dared to accept the job. On a ranch in northern Mexico, a 77-year-old man shot and killed four of the gunmen who had been sent to kill him, only to be murdered by the rest. He was celebrated as a hero. Horrific news reports have become commonplace in Mexico. Some 29,000 people have died in drug wars within the past four years, and this year the number of killings doubled to about 12,000. An astonishing 98 percent of the crimes committed in Mexico remain unpunished.
It has been four years since President Felipe Calderón came to office promising to defeat the cartels, multibillion-dollar organizations that supply the United States, the world’s largest drug market, with cocaine, crystal meth, heroin and marijuana. Calderón mobilized 45,000 soldiers and federal police officers for his campaign. There was no one else he could trust, including local police forces and governors. The army is his only reliable tool.
There have certainly been many spectacular arrests. Famous drug kingpins were arrested or killed, including the leader of the “La Familia” cartel, who died earlier this month. But have these successes weakened the drug cartels? There are few indications that this is the case.
At first, many citizens saw the violent excesses as the beginning of a necessary evil. Recent opinion polls, however, show that a majority now opposes the government’s strategy. The newspapers are filled with reports of kidnappings, blackmail and beheadings. There are blogs that specialize in publishing photos of severed limbs taken with mobile phones.
It is easy to picture the savagery with which this war is being waged. But it is more difficult to understand why the violence doesn’t stop, what its causes are and what can be done about it. Could the legalization of drugs be the answer, as some experts suggest? Or maybe more border controls? Would a new national police force and a reform of the government solve the problem? Or is it best to simply leave the cartels alone, which for years was the government’s policy?
These are the questions that Mexico is asking itself in 2010, the 200th anniversary of the beginning of its war of independence. The filmmaker Luis Estrada has given his native country a bitter film for its anniversary: “El Infierno” (Hell). It is the portrait of a world consisting of nothing but narcos, whores and corruption. “We have a national problem, and it’s called impunity,” says Estrada, a soft-spoken man with glasses and a gray beard. “People who break the law aren’t punished. That’s why many believe that honesty doesn’t pay. We Mexicans are in hell, that’s for sure. I just don’t know which pit of hell it is at the moment.”

A Ghost-Town Census

It is a hot day in late November, and Ivana García has screwed up the courage to return to Ciudad Mier for the first time since she left. She walks through the abandoned streets of the town that was once hers, a 34-year-old woman in jeans, wearing gold-plated earrings and carrying a plastic purse. The army has hired her to count the number of people still living in the town, but there are few left to count. They offered her 700 pesos, or €42 ($55) a week. She was afraid to take the job, but she needed the money to pay the exorbitant rent for her apartment in Ciudad Alemán, the next town, where she now lives.
García and two other young women walk from house to house, knocking on doors that no one opens. The few people they encounter couldn’t afford to leave or are very old. The questionnaires the women have brought along in clear plastic binders include questions about income and the remaining residents’ opinions about safety. They represent the government’s clumsy attempt to demonstrate that it still exists. Two dozen soldiers follow the women, on foot and in pickup trucks armed with machine guns, securing the streets. Most of the houses they pass are riddled with bullet holes. Starving dogs slink across the dirt roads.
Some 400 people still live in a refugee camp in the next town. They have been there for more than four weeks, and most do not want to return to Ciudad Mier. They say that when the army withdraws, in a few weeks or months, the whole thing will start again.

‘Some States Remind Me of Afghanistan’

Ciudad Mier is in the northwestern panhandle of the state of Tamaulipas, a narrow strip of land bordering Texas. It is one of the areas some experts compare to failed states. One expert, Edgardo Buscaglia, who specializes in drug-related organized crime, is currently working in Kandahar, Afghanistan. In a telephone interview, he said he had stopped using the expression “Colombianization” to describe what’s happening in Mexico. “There are now areas in some states that remind me of what I see here in Afghanistan,” he said. Narcos, or drug dealers, control about 12 percent of Mexican territory, according to some estimates.
There are no longer any police officers or mayors in large sections of Tamaulipas and the northern part of Nuevo León, two states in northeastern Mexico. They were either killed or have fled, and now the narcos operate checkpoints on the streets.
The two drug cartels that are at war in Tamaulipas were allies until a year ago: The Gulf cartel and its paramilitary arm, the Zetas. Here, the term drug war isn’t just a metaphor for a series of gang murders, as it is in Ciudad Juárez. Instead, it describes a level of almost military violence between cartels, which send armies of adolescent “sicarios,” or killers, into battle, often better equipped than soldiers in the Mexican army.
A Code of Silence
The mayor of Ciudad Mier, a perfumed man who wears his shirt open at the chest, is standing in the town hall. He says he cannot give an interview, or else — and he runs his finger across the neck of this reporter to demonstrate what could happen to him if he did. The citizens of his town want to talk, but they also want to remain anonymous. There has always been drug smuggling here, they say, and the Zetas have always been in power. In a town where there was hardly any work for young men, the drug lords were able to entice recruits with the promise of fast money, cocaine and the prettiest girls.
Their villas, built in the ornamental narco style, with gilded railings and decorative columns, are still standing. The owners fled when the Zetas broke with the Gulf Cartel, and today they live in the United States or in Mexico City. There was a victory parade of sorts when the Gulf Cartel captured the town on Feb. 22. A motorcade of 60 SUVs and pickup trucks carrying heavily armed fighters drove into the streets of Ciudad Mier.
They killed five police officers that had worked for the Zetas, beheaded a police chief and a female drug dealer, and laid out the remains on the village square. After that, say local residents, the new gangs were friendly. Unlike the Zetas, they said hello to people on the street. But the fighting wasn’t over yet. In mid-October, Ivana García found a dead Zeta fighter on the street. She had never seen the man. He must have been a mercenary from somewhere else, she thought, a young man wearing brown trousers and with a muscular torso. He was lying in a pool of blood.
On Nov. 2, the Zetas returned, driving 40 heavily armored SUVs with gun barrels poking out of their sides. The ensuing battle wore on for days and nights, killing many, and leading to the departure of residents and the arrival of the army.
The soldiers stalking along behind García as she walks through Ciudad Mier hold their rifles at the ready, as if someone could shoot at them at any moment. They storm suspicious-looking houses. The hooded commander says that he doesn’t know whether all of the bandits were driven out. The government of Tamaulipas claims the town is now safe and has called upon the local population to return to their homes. By the end of her first day of work, García has counted six inhabited houses.

‘Narco Saints,’ Money and Girls

Almost no other business in the world is as lucrative as the drug trade. The United Nations estimates that $72 billion (€55 billion) worth of drugs are sold each year. Cocaine is the most profitable of all drugs. Cocaine paste costs $800 a kilo (2.2 pounds) in Colombia, and in Chicago a buyer pays $100 a gram. The price goes up by 12,400 percent along the way. Mexican cartels smuggle an estimated 192 tons to the United States each year.
There are seven drug cartels in Mexico. While alliances often change, almost all the groups have their origins in Sinaloa, a state on Mexico’s west coast known as the birthplace of the narcos. The area is home to Joaquín Guzmán, also called El Chapo, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel. He’s the world’s most glamorous drug lord, as evidenced by the fact that Forbes includes him on its list of the wealthiest people in the world. (No one, however, has access to his bank statements. Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, is the Rotterdam of the cocaine trade, the place where prices are set. It lies between the Pacific Ocean and the green hills of the Sierra, where farmers grow marijuana and opium poppies. It is a friendly-looking city of 600,000 with whitewashed homes, though Culiacán has the second-highest murder rate in the country.
For the past two years, El Chapo has been battling his former allies, the Beltrán Leyva brothers. It is a war of kings, and when author Elmer Mendoza tells the story, it sounds like a Greek tragedy. Mendoza, 61, is a bearded, soft-spoken man born in Culiacán, where his crime novels are set. He portrays this world so realistically that some accuse him of being a narco author.
“I’ve been hearing their legends since I was a child,” he says. “These people had bigger houses and the most beautiful girls, and sometimes songs were even written in their honor.” There is a folk hero in Sinaloa, Jesús Malverde, who is known as the “narco saint,” a Robin Hood who took from the rich and gave to the poor. Many believe that El Chapo is his revenant, a hero of the people. Mendoza says that what is happening to his country is terrible. “But as an author, I admire people who do extraordinary things. Isn’t there something epic about bringing a shipment of cocaine from Medellín to Los Angeles?”

Culiacán, Ground Zero

The gang war that originated in Culiacán and eventually engulfed half the country began on Jan. 21, 2008, when the army arrested the drug lord Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, known as El Mochomo, in a simple house in the Tierra Blanca neighborhood. Did El Chapo tip off the army? Convinced that he did, the Beltrán Leyva brothers brought Zeta mercenaries into the city and began killing everyone who worked for him, including police officers, judges, politicians and journalists.
These people had believed that El Chapo would protect them, but then the Zetas shot and killed one of his sons in a shopping center parking lot. “People began to doubt their hero. They were afraid,” says Mendoza. “Isn’t that beautiful, from a purely literary point of view?” The author stands in the cemetery of Culiacán, the narcos’ final resting place. The graveyard is a city of marble and domed mausoleums known as Jardines del Humaya. It’s the size of several football fields, and it continues to grow.
They’re all buried here, side-by-side — the drug lords and their rivals, their children and the 18-year-old killers who, at the end of their brief lives, were at least able to afford some measure of splendor. The larger than life-sized portraits of young men with hard features hang in giant, 10-meter-tall mausoleums, next to pictures of their girlfriends and their weapons.
Nowhere in Culiacán is the power of the drug cartels as palpable as it is here. This is their temple city, and anyone who desecrates their graves can expect to receive death threats from the scouts and guards before long.
The Absent Government
Why isn’t El Chapo, the most powerful of all drug lords, in prison? He’s been living in a secret location for years. Is the government incompetent, or is it protecting a cartel? Many credible people believe the government has an agreement with the drug lord. Some believe that it is trying to solve the violence problem by handing over the drug trade to one cartel. In a recently published book, investigative journalists Anabel Hernández claims that former President Vicente Fox allowed El Chapo to escape from a maximum security prison in 2001 in return for a payment of $20 million. According to Hernandez, the Calderón government knows his whereabouts, but instead of arresting him it is eliminating his enemies.
There are many rumors and conspiracy theories in Mexico. What is perhaps most remarkable about them is what people believe their government to be capable of. They have little faith in federal institutions, which are weak. Mexico has been a real democracy only for the last 10 years, after being controlled for 70 years by a single party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI protected organized crime, but also held it in check.
President Calderón declared war on the cartels, but he lacked the necessary tools. The police are corrupt at almost every level, and in some communities they’re identical with the ruling cartel, which helps to explain why so many municipal officers are murdered. The justice system is also viewed as corrupt. There are no independent prosecutors, and charges are never brought in many cases, because they are handled poorly or because defendants buy their way out.
The army is the only institution that Calderón can trust, although the story of Ciudad Mier reveals how ineffective it is. Soldiers can occupy a territory, but they cannot investigate or penetrate the structures of a cartel. According to security consultant Alberto Islas, a cartel is like a logistics company with a military arm. Instead of scrutinizing the structures, the government becomes embroiled in skirmishes with 18-year-old foot soldiers.

A ‘Decapitation Strategy’

The government has hardly any functioning investigative agencies. Mexico receives key information from US government agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The Americans provide the army with information on the whereabouts of drug lords, allowing the Mexican soldiers to capture or kill them. This “decapitation strategy” produces reports of successes, but no real success. The cartels quickly replace their leaders.
The massive deployment of the military also poses a threat to society. Throughout Mexico, soldiers have been accused of hundreds of cases of human rights violations and torture, even murder. Critics say the large number of military operations is responsible for the violence in the first place, because it has destroyed equilibriums and triggered turf wars across the country.
The army cannot solve Mexico’s real problems — poverty, lack of education and weak government. Most experts agree on how Mexico ought to liberate itself. The only question is whether anyone has the political power to do it.
The country is a long way from being a stable democratic society, says Luís Astorga, a social scientist in Mexico City. The biggest challenge, according to Astorga, is to create a constitutional state strong enough to resist the power and money of the cartels. This requires nonpartisan political will; but Astorga says representatives of the three major parties all have their hands in the drug business. Astorga says he does not believe the government is cooperating with a cartel. But as long as there are no independent judges, he believes, there will always be rumors and speculation.
Many yearn for simple solutions; they believe in a return to the days when the cartels were allowed to do as they pleased. Even some high-level politicians say privately that the problem is drug consumption in the United States, and that it’s time to legalize marijuana. But the cartels are involved in up to 22 other types of crimes as well, including film piracy, human trafficking and extortion.
Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution in Washington says that bringing in the army was unavoidable, but that what is important now is to finally develop a functioning police force. Mexico does have plans for a national police reform, but they are making slow progress Edgardo Buscaglia, the expert on drug-related crime, and his team studied 17 countries that have successfully fought organized crime. He says that all of them took the same four important steps.
• First, says Buscaglia, comes a reform of the judicial system.
• Second, laws are needed to fight corruption in politics, because 70 percent of all election campaigns in the country are partially financed with drug money.
• Third, Mexico must investigate the flow of funds from the drug trade into the economy. According to Buscaglia, 78 percent of the Mexican economy has ties to the drug cartels.
• Finally, social programs are needed for young people, as the Colombian city of Medellín has demonstrated. Such programs are meant to turn young people’s attention away from a life working for the cartels — a life that can end quickly.

Taking Back Mexico, With PowerPoint

There are many ideas, but who is there to implement them?
Javier Treviño, the lieutenant governor of Nuevo León, has a plan that consists of a large number of PowerPoint slides. He wants to eliminate violence in Monterrey, the city where he lives, and in the surrounding state. Treviño, a short man with a moustache and glasses, speaks English with an American accent. He studied at Harvard, then worked as a diplomat and later in private industry, before he entered politics. He’s one of the few people in Mexico who have not lost faith in the ability of politics to shape the country.
Perhaps it is also a question of honor for Monterrey, Mexico’s wealthiest city. Located in the northeastern part of the country, 140 kilometers (88 miles) south of the US border and surrounded by mountains on three sides, Monterrey resembles an American city, with its glass and marble office towers. Many of the country’s most important companies are headquartered there.
It came as a shock to the city’s affluent citizens when, at the beginning of the year, members of the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel suddenly started shooting each other on their streets. The battle being waged in Ciudad Mier had moved to the middle of Monterrey, an economic center that was always immune to chaos elsewhere in Mexico. Many of the wealthy left town, or even the country — including the publisher of the country’s most important newspaper, La Reforma, who fled to Dallas.
Treviño is proud of the 29 slides in his presentation, which he shows to every visitor. His plan includes all the elements the think tanks have deemed necessary: social programs and reforms of the judiciary and the criminal code. The state of Nuevo León has also established a statewide police force that it hopes will finally be clean and effective. The officers will be required to take regular lie-detector tests. They will be paid well enough to end their dependence on bribes; they will receive scholarships for their children.
Nuevo León is to become a model for all of Mexico, says Treviño. It sounds like an effective plan. And who knows? It might even work. Once it is implemented, there might be at least one state in Mexico with a functioning police force. Treviño wants to make a start by strengthening institutions and society, and what better place to launch such an effort than Monterrey, the most advanced city in the country?
He continues clicking through his slides. The next one shows the country’s highway network. Two of the five main highways in the north are colored dark red, which means that they are safe for travel. The goal for 2011, says Treviño, is to make the three other highways safe as well.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Source: www.spiegel online 23rd Dec. 2010

By Douglas B. Marlowe, J.D., Ph.D.
Chief of Science & Policy

Effectiveness

More research has been published on the effects of adult drug courts than virtually all other criminal justice programs combined. By 2006, the scientific community had concluded beyond a reasonable doubt from advanced statistical procedures called meta-analyses2that drug courts reduce criminal recidivism, typically measured by fewer re-arrests for new offenses and technical violations. The Table below summarizes the results of five independent meta-analyses all reporting superior effects for drug courts over randomized or matched comparison samples of drug offenders who were on probation or undergoing traditional criminal case processing. In each analysis, the results revealed that drug courts significantly reduced crime rates by an average of approximately 8 to 26 percent, with the “average of the averages” reflecting approximately a 10 to 15 percent reduction in recidivism.
Because these figures reflect averages, they mask substantial variability in the performance of individual drug courts. Approximately three quarters of the drug courts (78%) were found to have significantly reduced crime (Shaffer, 2006), with the best drug courts reducing crime by as much as 35 to 40 percent (Lowenkamp et al., 2005; Shaffer,
2006). In well-controlled experimental studies, the reductions in recidivism were shown to last at least three years post-entry (Gottfredson et al., 2005, 2006; Turner et al., 1999), and in one study the effects lasted an astounding 14 years (Finigan et al., 2007).
In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO, 2005) similarly concluded that drug courts reduce crime; however, relatively little information was available at that time about their effects on other important outcomes, such as substance abuse, employment, family functioning and mental health. In response to the GAO report, the National Institute of Justice sponsored a national study of adult drug courts, entitled the Multisite Adult Drug Court Evaluation (or MADCE). The MADCE compared outcomes for participants in 23 adult drug courts located in seven geographic clusters around the country (n = 1,156) to those of a matched comparison sample of drug offenders drawn from six non-drug court sites in four geographic clusters (n = 625). The participants in both groups were interviewed at entry and at 6 and 18-month follow-ups, and provided oral fluid specimens at the 18-month follow-up. Their official criminal records are also being examined for up to 24 months.
The 6 and 18-month findings were presented at the 2009 Annual Conference of the American Society of Criminology (Rempel & Green, 2009; Rossman et al., 2009). In addition to significantly less involvement in criminal activity, the drug court participants also reported significantly less use of illegal drugs and heavy use of alcohol3. These self-report findings were confirmed by saliva drug tests, which revealed significantly fewer positive results for the drug court participants at the 18-month assessment (29% vs. 46%, p < .01). The drug court participants also reported significantly better improvements in their family relationships, and non-significant trends favoring higher employment rates and higher annual incomes. These findings confirm that drug courts elicit substantial improvements in other outcomes apart from criminal recidivism.

Cost-Effectiveness

In line with their positive effects on crime reduction, drug courts have also proven highly cost-effective (Belenko et al., 2005). A recent cost-related meta-analysis concluded that drug courts produce an average of $2.21 in direct benefits to the criminal justice system for every $1.00 invested — a 221% return on investment (Bhati et al., 2008). When drug courts targeted their services to the more serious, higher-risk offenders, the average return on investment was determined to be even higher: $3.36 for every $1.00 invested.
These savings reflect measurable cost-offsets to the criminal justice system stemming from reduced re-arrests, law enforcement contacts, court hearings, and use of jail or prison beds. When more distal cost-offsets were also taken into account, such as savings from reduced foster care placements and healthcare service utilization, studies have reported economic benefits ranging from approximately $2.00 to $27.00 for every $1.00 invested (Carey et al., 2006; Loman, 2004; Finigan et al., 2007; Barnoski & Aos, 2003). The result has been net economic benefits to local communities ranging from approximately $3,000 to $13,000 per drug court participant (e.g., Aos et al., 2006; Carey et al., 2006; Finigan et al., 2007; Loman, 2004; Barnoski & Aos, 2003; Logan et al., 2004).

Target Population

No program should be expected to work for all people. According to the criminological paradigm of the Risk Principle, intensive programs such as drug courts are expected to have the greatest effects for high-risk offenders who have more severe antisocial backgrounds or poorer prognoses for success in standard treatments (e.g., Andrews & Bonta, 2006; Taxman & Marlowe, 2006). Such high-risk individuals ordinarily require a combined regimen of intensive supervision, behavioral accountability, and evidence-based treatment services, which drug courts are specifically structured to provide.

Consistent with the predictions of the Risk Principle, drug courts have been shown to have the greatest effects for high-risk participants who were relatively younger, had more prior felony convictions, were diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, or had previously failed in less intensive dispositions (Lowenkamp et al., 2005; Fielding et al., 2002; Marlowe et al., 2006, 2007; Festinger et al., 2002). In one meta-analysis, the effect size for drug court was determined to be twice the magnitude for high-risk participants than for low-risk participants (Lowenkamp et al., 2005). In a county-wide evaluation of drug courts in Los Angeles, virtually all of the positive effects of the drug courts were determined to have been attributable to the higher-risk participants (Fielding et al., 2002).

Fidelity to the 10 Key Components

In fiscally challenging times, there is always the pressure to do more with less. This raises the critical question of whether certain components of the drug court model can be dropped or the dosage decreased without eroding the effects. The “key components” of drug courts are hypothesized to include a multidisciplinary team approach, an ongoing schedule of judicial status hearings, weekly drug testing, contingent sanctions and incentives, and a standardized regimen of substance abuse treatment (NADCP, 1997). Each of these hypothesized key components has been studied by researchers or evaluators to determine whether it is, in fact, necessary for effective results. The results have confirmed that fidelity to the full drug court model is necessary for optimum outcomes — assuming that the programs are treating their correct target population of high-risk, addicted drug offenders.

Multidisciplinary Team Approach

The most effective drug courts require regular attendance by the judge, defense counsel, prosecutor, treatment providers and law enforcement officers at staff meetings and status hearings (Carey et al., 2008). When any one of these professional disciplines was regularly absent from team discussions, the programs tended to have outcomes that were, on average, approximately 50 percent less favorable (Carey et al., in press). In other words, if any one professional discipline walks away from the table, there is reason to anticipate the effectiveness of a drug court could be cut by as much as one half.

Judicial Status Hearings

Research clearly demonstrates that judicial status hearings are an indispensible element of drug courts (Carey et al., 2008; Festinger et al., 2002; Marlowe et al., 2004a, 2004b, 2006, 2007). The optimal schedule appears to be no less frequently than bi-weekly hearings for at least the first phase (first few months) of the program. Subsequently, the frequency of status hearings can be ratcheted downward; however, it appears that status hearings should be held at least once per month until participants have achieved a stable period of sobriety and have completed the intensive phases of their treatment regimen
.
Drug Testing

The most effective drug courts perform urine drug testing at least twice per week during the first several months of the program (Carey et al., 2008). Because the metabolites of most common drugs of abuse remain detectable in human bodily fluids for only about one to four days, testing less frequently can leave an unacceptable time gap during which participants can use drugs and evade detection. In addition, drug testing is most effective when it is performed on a random basis. If participants know in advance when they will be drug tested, they may adjust their usage accordingly or take other countermeasures in an effort to beat the tests.

Graduated Sanctions & Rewards

The pervasive perception among both staff members and participants in drug courts is that sanctions and incentives are strong motivators of positive behavioral change (Lindquist et al., 2006; Goldkamp et al., 2002; Harrell & Roman, 2001; Farole & Cissner, 2007). Two randomized, controlled experiments have confirmed that the imposition of gradually escalating sanctions for infractions, including brief intervals of jail detention, significantly improves outcomes among drug offenders (Harrell et al., 1999; Hawken & Kleiman, 2009). Comparably less research has addressed the use of positive rewards in drug courts, but preliminary evidence suggests that tangible incentives may improve
outcomes especially for the more incorrigible, higher-risk participants (Marlowe et al., 2008).
Substance Abuse Treatment

Longer tenure in substance abuse treatment predicts better outcomes (Simpson et al., 1997) and drug courts are proven to retain offenders in treatment considerably longer than most other correctional programs (Belenko, 1998; Lindquist et al., 2009; Marlowe et al., 2003). The quality of treatment is also a critically important consideration. Significantly better outcomes have been achieved when drug courts adopted standardized, evidence-based treatments, including Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT; Heck, 2008; Kirchner & Goodman, 2007), the MATRIX Model (Marinelli-Casey et al., 2008) and Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST; Henggeler et al., 2006); as well as culturally proficient services (Vito & Tewksbury, 1998). What all of these evidence-based treatments share in common is that they are highly structured, are clearly specified in a manual or workbook, apply behavioral or cognitive-behavioral interventions, and take participants’ communities of origin into account.

Conclusion

The scientific evidence is overwhelming that adult drug courts reduce crime, reduce substance abuse, improve family relationships, and increase earning potential. In the process, they return net dollar savings back to their communities that are at least two to three times the initial investments. The optimal target population for drug courts has been identified, and fidelity to several key ingredients of the drug court model has been demonstrated to be necessary for favorable results.

The challenge now is to extend the reach of adult drug courts without diluting the intervention below effective levels. Any program can be made cheaper simply by lowering the dosage or by providing fewer services to more participants. The difficult task is to maintain effectiveness in the process. Rather than drop essential components of the drug court model, research indicates that the better course of action is to standardize the best practices of drug courts so they can be reliably implemented by a larger number of programs, each serving a larger census of clients. This is the next great challenge for the drug court field.

Source: National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

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1 Updated 6/29/10
Meta-analysis is an advanced statistical procedure that yields a conservative and rigorous estimate of the average effects of an intervention. It involves systematically reviewing the research literature, selecting out only those studies that are scientifically defensible according to standardized criteria, and statistically averaging the effects of the intervention across the good-quality studies (e.g., Lipsey & Wilson, 2002).
3 “Heavy use” of alcohol was defined as = 4 drinks per day for women, and = 5 drinks per day for men.
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