INTRODUCTION
I remember when I was a child; having been born and raised in the United States Air Force, listening to fighter jets take off and land. The power of the jet engines roaring, the sight of the highly skilled pilots performing seemingly impossible maneuvers willing to sacrifice everything, including their life, for freedom and justice for all. To this day the sight and sound of Jet Fighters and military aircraft, to me, is the sound of the protection of freedom. I certainly realize that this is not the case for everyone.
Many years later I would enlist in the Army. I learned about the United States Flag and its history. I came to understand the United States Flag was a living, breathing symbol drafted by our most gifted founders and sewn together by patriots who had a dream for a better life.
The most prestigious place on the battlefield in our founding years was that of the flag bearer, the person who carried the flag in to battle. They were often unarmed and always in the very front. If they were shot or wounded, the next available soldier would pick up that flag and continue to run forward in to battle until victory or until he too would drop. The Flag led all troops in to battle, it helped identify where the battle was amongst the smoke and confusion. The Flag and the idea of Freedom were to NEVER be captured. Rather than allow capture, the flag would be torn in to little pieces and distributed among its soldiers to keep hope for freedom and justice alive. It was to inspire those who were losing hope.
1 The PURPOSE was that anyone from anywhere could come to this Country and not fear persecution, that the meek would be protected and that differing opinions would be respected and revered with the closing line in our Pledge to that Flag and our cause was“ ~ and justice for All”. The original intent of our founding was to be a mosaic as a Nation and Not a melting pot.
This great history inspired me as it had so many others. I was then, and will always be, willing to make that ultimate sacrifice to preserve the ideals of freedom and our way of life.
We weren’t perfect then, as a Nation, and we are not perfect now. But we are resilient.
Why American Corrections ~ Isn’t
My life’s path led me to the criminal justice system 38 years ago and 32 years ago it began here in NH.
I strongly submit to you today as a public servant for over three decades that significant reform is necessary, not only in our criminal justice system, but in our societal and individual thinking as well if we are to persevere as an undivided Nation that hails to be “indivisible with liberty and justice for all”.
The MISSION of Corrections is public safety.
The PURPOSE of Corrections is detention, for pretrial folks who may pose a risk of flight or are considered a threat to public safety who cannot make bail and punishment for those that are sentenced.
2 PUNISHMENT in the United States Correctional System is best described by the American Correctional Association. In accordance with the ACA, the concept of punishment in America cites “Inmates are not in jail to be punished, they are in jail as punishment”. Corrections then have a duty to provide for the care, custody and management of adult offenders while incarcerated.
One of our biggest challenges in this Country today is addiction and the misuse of both legal and illicit drugs. Drug users and addicts are not necessarily a risk to public safety or a risk of flight. Whether or not to punish drug use behavior is the current change in America’s thinking and rightfully so.
An awakening for those of us in the criminal justice system AND our political representation is not only possible, but is now necessary if we have any hope to make a positive difference in our approach on addressing the challenge in managing Drug misuse and Addiction.
FACTS MATTER. SCIENCE MATTERS.
In the United States, there are
2.1 Million Incarcerated, 6.6 million in our correctional system.
Corrections was originally intended to be a detention facility for Criminals with an effort towards rehabilitation.
ALL branches of the Criminal Justice System have experienced a very fast expansion of mission creep. Our ever-changing society continues to reshape the level of demand of our response.
3 Today Corrections is tasked with being a detention center, a mental health institution, a hospital and a school. At times, we are even a nursing home. The largest mental health facility in every community across the Nation is the local jail.
In Modern Corrections Our categories of offender are:
Career criminals
Situational offenders
Sex offenders
Mentally ill offenders
Drug users
160 – all but violent = 13 inmates. Back out Mentally ill, Drug possession, Crimes committed in order to get drugs, inmates who pose no threat to public safety.
The COST of corrections for our County is over $38,325. Per year, less than some States and more than others, but trending with the National average.
I have often pondered what sort of a treatment program for addiction or mental health could $38,000. per year buy for each individual who needs it?
Based on our current collective thinking, what good does one year in jail do either specifically or generally? The fact is, it doesn't do society much good at all.
4 The business of Corrections demands professional personnel with longevity – in order to have the experience required to do what our communities expect of us.
Nationally now, Correctional Officers average length of stay is 1.5 years.
72% of corrections professionals have less than 5 years on the job. What we need from our primary personnel is often not available as they are not with us long enough. Why? It is a thankless job. (Media example) It earns less than other components of the CJ system.
So Truly, What is society’s realistic expectation of our success given our current multi faceted mission and often times, lack of support?
We struggle daily with trying to balance mission creep and expectation vs. funding. I mentioned Mission creep earlier as a significant challenge for modern law enforcement. No component of the Criminal Justice System was ever intended to be in the drug rehabilitation business. And yet that net thrown over society, which has become our mission, grows wider every day.
FACTS MATTER. SCIENCE MATTERS.
Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion or LEAD is a popular program growing Nationally where addicts who surrender to the police are referred to treatment without fear of conviction. I am all for avoiding prison for an addiction, I just do not subscribe to addiction management being the responsibility of first responders, the police or corrections.
5 Well, for now, it is in our mission description and so ~
We now provide Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) to addicted persons while they are incarcerated in hopes that they will continue this treatment upon release and not utilize illegal substances, or worse, use them and die. And we should do this, it is the right thing to do based on our current system and our County’s increased desire for harm reduction practice.
Why should an addict have to surrender to a fire department or a police agency for help, which many communities are advocating today? Why does one have to get arrested in our Country to get treatment?
THE PROBLEM with our criminal justice system and public policy is that we think we can control human behavior. Our Academies have recruits believing and expecting that they control behavior. We need to understand that this is not possible. We in law enforcement control nothing. But we CAN manage anything.
We should not forget the 9 principles of Sir Robert Peel, the founder of modern Policing from his proposal in the 1800’s, but especially his last principle, which is “To recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and NOT the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them”. Police Action doe NOT equal police efficiency. Increased policing does NOT help this problem of drug use.
Imagine if our system of crime control were referred to as “crime management”!
Imagine if our drug control policy were referred to as “Drug management policy”.
6 The word “control” suggests to me that one can turn this off or make it stop, That is the true action of the word control.
The word “control” suggests that until we get to zero – we can’t stop what we are doing, no matter how ineffective it is because ~ well, we think are in control!
Imagine if we replaced the term “Fight” Drug addiction with “understand” Drug addiction. How would that reshape our National response?
As individuals, when we try to solve this problem, we MUST understand that our frame of reference is different than that of an addict. We cannot be critical of addiction when we then go home to a warm house, a loving family, a paycheck, a bright future and certainly having to endure only minimal physical or emotional pain. A person who has none of these OR anyone who suffers from physical or emotional pain will seek to ease that pain, especially if there is no hope for a future.
Our dosage remedy to ease our physical or emotional pain will be proportionate to our perceived suffering (repeat).
So how big is this issue of illegal drug use? Do we think we know?
2.1 Million people behind bars with 6.6 Million people in the correctional system. The largest offender population of any Nation on earth and yet, not the most violent one. Our correctional system is beginning to question, of these millions of incarcerated citizens, who really needs to be in jail?
IF incarceration is the answer, Well then, Facts and science should matter!
7 According to the SUBSATANCE ABUSE AND MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES ADMINISTRATION:
In 2017 30.5 million people aged 12 or older used an illicit drug in the last 30 days.
The NATIONAL SURVEY ON DRUG USE AND HEALTH estimates that in 2016 over 130 million people in the United States aged 12 and older tried an illegal drug in their lifetime.
Currently we have built a correctional system that we cannot afford and yet, we have only 2.1 million of potentially another 31 million people to find and incarcerate at just under 39k per year with no lasting or positive effect of that incarceration. We have locked up millions of non-violent people that will have enormous opportunity costs and societal costs that will have long lasting negative effects on our Nation as well as these individuals.
Drug use has three categories ~ Use, Misuse and Addiction ~ just like alcohol does. Let me be the messenger today to share with you that not everyone who uses heroin, cocaine or any other illicit drug is an addict. Many are functional recreational users. Like many of you, I too was a shocked non-believer until research reveals the facts.
Dr. Carl Hart (PhD, Columbia University.) Is the head of Behavioral Neuroscience at Columbia University. His General Area of Research is Behavioral and neuropharmacological effects of psychoactive drugs in humans. Dr. Hart said: "Science should be driving our drug policies, even if it makes us uncomfortable.” {Ph.D., University of Wyoming, 1996}
8 Dr. Hart encouraged me a few years ago to no longer say that drug use is a “health” problem. He pointed out that many Americans ~ up to 31 million ~ are regular recreational users and it presents no remarkable health problems for most of them. Please note here that neither Dr. Hart nor I encourage the use of any kind of drug ~ that isn’t the point.
Enter on the scene of the illegal market ~ Fentanyl and the massive unintentional deaths associated with that. In the last 12 months, the Cheshire County Jail has lost to overdose deaths 28 recidivists after their release from custody. The year before almost as many. These are people in our community who we have come to know who were on the criminal justice merry go round, because of drug misuse, who are no longer with us due to fentanyl overdose.
This recidivism, this inability to fix people is grueling for us and for first responders. There is LOCKER ROOM TALK ON how many times should we save a life? (Narcan.) Do the best we can and accept the result. Do our job. Can’t pick and choose what critical skill sets we will use and when. Could be YOUR child…..
Our community has lost educators and other professionals to this over dose phenomenon who were never incarcerated or even arrested. They certainly couldn’t seek treatment for that would require an unfathomable personal disclosure in our society.
9 When these types of death in large numbers occur in communities of color – it is a crime wave. But now – now that we all know someone who knows someone of all socio economic backgrounds and race who have succumbed to this tragedy ~ it has become an “epidemic”. Our white privilege in NH joins the nation in redefining the problem as it creeps into OUR neighborhood. It isn’t a crime wave anymore – now it’s an epidemic.
I have had several opportunities to give presentations on drug policy reform. People often approach me afterward and say “my daughter died of an overdose”. When I hear this I say to them “your daughter was not a criminal”. These words often result in the parents breaking down emotionally. They do so because they have lived with the societal stigmatization of addiction assigned to their child, a label unworthy of the vibrant young life that they brought into this world and loved so dearly. Indicating to these parents that their child was not a criminal seem to be a vindication for their children for which they are all worthy.
So how did all this happen and what can we do about it? I believe that it happened because we all have a confirmation bias. We hold fast to our current beliefs about any issue and work very hard to defend those beliefs because it is uncomfortable to be wrong. We will accept only points that support our view rather than challenge our view to strengthen it with the truth or science.
10 I believe that many of us are governed by default pictures that pop up in our mind that were created by propaganda or false narratives to purposely create default pictures in our mind when we hear of certain topics. An example of this is when I invited an individual to tour our jail who was running for a U.S. Senate seat a while back as he wanted to know more about the effects of the opioid crisis in our community. I brought him in to the dayroom where there were 18 or so young women, half of whom were mothers and more than 80 % were victims of domestic violence or sexual assault. I asked the group of women who among them was addicted to opioids and all of them raised their hands! My guest gasped out loud unavoidably. As his eyes teared he looked at me and said “these could be my daughters”. “It isn’t what I imagined” he said. This is because our default picture of an addict is of a needle protruding from the arm of a nasty criminal laying next to a toilet in a gas station. Our default picture is erroneous by a huge measure.
Our Institutional Thinking is different than our individual thinking. We have a need it seems for interpreters to tell us how to think and feel about certain topics. After our Nations leader speaks, whomever that is at any given time, we need a selected party member to tell us what he said after that and to tell us how he did ~ as if we cannot make that decision for ourselves. Many people need Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow to explain to them what is happening and will hold fast to this mental programming. These interpreters can be harmful and careless and negatively impact our individual thinking. We are becoming a society where we cannot disagree with one another and still like one another. That ignorance will separate and destroy us.
11 So what can we do?
1. When we seek to establish policy on how to remedy addiction and we do not have both a former and current addict at the table, we are not going to get it right. WHY? Because our frame of reference sees everything through a very different and obscure lens than that of an addict. 2. Let’s continue to educate ourselves. Learn about the history of addiction in America ~ how we got here, how do we get out of it? Read and research the issue. Two great book to begin this enlightenment are “Chasing the Scream” written by Johan Hari and “Drug Crazy” by Mike Gray. 3. Believe only facts. Challenge what we hear. Is it really true? Because FACTS MATTER, SCIENCE MATTERS. 4. Let’s embrace “managing this problem” and do away with thinking that we can “control it”. Because we can’t. Attempt to control is a futile exercise in ignorance. Management is learning about harm reduction programs. Management is about looking at other communities and countries that have had success in their struggle with this issue. Management is having an honest and open discussion with addicts and not forcing our morals upon them. 5. Understand that increased prohibition has a ballooning effect and will always only exacerbate the problem. This is not only pertaining to illegal drug laws, but also the Government’s chokehold on physicians and therapists. Politicians do not know more about addiction than Doctors and therapists do. We should encourage and establish Blue ribbon panels to manage our drug MANAGEMENT policy and ESTABLISH AND SUPPORT harm reduction strategies.
12 6. Have faith in the human condition and provide a second chance. Set and enforce limits with people we know who are trying to fight their addiction. Most people DO NOT want to be addicted. Acknowledge that there are 3 categories of consumer: use, misuse and addiction and we will never make that stop. 7. Understand that if we think that only BIG PHARMA started this, then we are incarcerating addiction – just as if we would incarcerate diabetes or obesity. If we think that only thugs are using, then we are grossly unenlightened on the subject. 8. When we hear people say “we have to do something” ask what that something is? When our Government says we will give you more money to fight this problem – insist on asking HOW will you FIGHT this problem? WHAT WILL THAT MONEY DO TO MAKE A REMARKEABLE DIFFERENCE? Enhancing law enforcement effort to create a drug free society will not ever happen. Ever. That is a waste of resources. Countries that have had remarkable success in managing this issue have COMMITTED to “Criminal Justice Reinvestment” ~ that is the money saved by not pursuing, convicting and incarcerating users is diverted into programing, rehabilitation and second chance opportunities. These successful social experiments began in 1996 (22 Years ago)~ so the science and the facts on success are in and irrefutable. 9. Please know this ~ there is NO PANACEA to ending addiction! WE will always have to work to improve our management of this situation. We will never be able to control it. 10. Let’s get back to our correctional primary mission ~ only incarcerate people who are a threat to public safety and not jail people because of
13 our societal confirmation bias or default pictures. Lets incarcerate people because it makes a difference and not simply because we are mad at them.
Occasionally, after I reveal my position on this complex issue, some people say of me to others that I am “pro drug use” because of my position.
Anyone who tells you that I am “pro drug use” is not paying attention. They are not enlightened on the topic and I dare say are doing a horrible disservice to justice and human rights in our community.
Advocacy for drug policy reform and harm reduction is NOT advocacy for use. It is an approach of management over control, which is proven to have far greater success.
14 Why did we begin our talk on this controversial topic with the Flag bearer?
The flag bearer ran head first in to battle with the knowledge that they would be struck down defending the rights, the freedoms and the care of those less fortunate. He was the marker on the battlefield for others to follow, which helped identify where the battle really was amongst the smoke and confusion. He was a protector of the meek and died for preservation of the dreams of those who dared to dream. He did so To Honor the Pledge of allegiance to the flag of United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
I ask you today, please join me in being a Flag bearer. Help lead the way amongst the smoke and confusion to keep hope, human rights and freedom to persevere and overcome ALIVE.
I am NOT pro drug use.
I just think that
FACTS MATTER. SCIENCE MATTERS.
And I sincerely hope that TRUTH has a future.
Thank you. Richard N. Van Wickler [email protected] 603-903-1610 (office) 28 July 2019 Monadnock Lyceum Peterborough, NH
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