The War on Poor Black Women

African-American women make up only 12 percent of the female population in the U.S., but now comprise more than 50 percent of the female prison population in the U.S. This fact has led many to believe that what started as the “war on drugs” has quickly become the “war on poor black women.”

The number of women incarcerated for drug-related crimes increased by 433 percent between 1986 and 1991. But for African-American women it rose an astounding 828 percent, while the increase for white women was 241 percent, and for Latina women a 328 percent increase.

The causes of the epidemic of imprisonment of young black girls are rooted in the national zero tolerance rules, the war on drugs, policies and a juvenile justice system that treats women of color differently.

The crackdown on drug-related crimes was sold to the American public as the answer to the escalating levels of violent crime (mostly by men), but has subsequently affected women, and disproportionately women of color. Most women caught up in the drug trade play minor roles, but fall prey to the over-punitive policing and sentencing policies.

Due to Pennsylvania’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws, judges are not allowed to consider the individual and unique circumstances of a case. Even a woman with no prior offenses or with clear financial responsibility for a family, the judge is required to give a minimum sentence to those found guilty.

Experts argue that the intersection of race, class and gender puts low-income women of color, especially African-American women, in “triple jeopardy” and contributes to their disproportionate incarceration. 

Incarcerating women exacerbates problems that their families must deal with in their absence. Investing public funds in effective drug treatment and gender-sensitive services to help women live a prison-free life that allows them to continue to support their families makes far more sense than incarceration both in terms of long-term community health as well as from an economic stand point – it costs far less to pay for drug treatment than incarceration.

 The Women’s Prison Association’s “matrix” approach serves as a model for assisting women who might otherwise face incarceration stabilize themselves and their families.  WPA emphasizes the importance of understanding how poverty, trauma and victimization, and bad choices can combine to propel women into substance abuse and criminal involvement.  Successfully serving these women will mean giving access to coordinated services that address these multiple issues simultaneously. Good public policy can reduce trauma to women and families while reducing the need to spend scarce public dollars.

*Statistics for this post were obtained from The Institute on Women and Criminal Justice. 

Leah Wright is a high school student at Mastery Charter School – Lenfest Campus

Katherine Bisanz is a graduate student in Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania

2011 in Review: The Courage of our Clients

From Sara Rose in Pittsburgh:

The Mort family, with Isabella

As I reflect on the past year as an ACLU-PA staff attorney, foremost in my mind are the clients I represented. Sometimes, we focus more on the civil liberties we defend than the individuals who are affected - and while we say “the Constitution is our client,” it's the people we represent who illustrate why the Constitution is so important. It takes courage and perseverance to stand up for your rights. Their will and determination protect those rights for all of us. 

Steve Conway, a devoted father of three, became our client after Fayette County Children and Youth Services arbitrarily cut off his contact with his children. No one ever accused Steve of abusing or neglecting any of his children - CYS arbitrarily decided his legally consensual relationship with a younger woman constituted child abuse. He spent two years away from his children, including one with no contact whatsoever - no phone calls, not even e-mails. A federal judge ruled in his favor just before Thanksgiving 2010 - a few days after Steve was killed in a car crash.

Debra and Robert Conway, Steve's Parents, have continued the lawsuit on behalf of Steve’s estate. That was not an easy decision. They were forced to relive one of the most painful events in the life of their family – the government-enforced separation of their son from his children – and testify about those events during a four-day jury trial. Debra and Robert felt it was that important to stand up for their son’s rights, and to ensure that the heartache they endured at the hands of Fayette County CYS would not happen to another family.

Liz Mort and Alex Rodriguez were also separated from their child – this time in Lawrence County, by CYS and by Jameson Hospital in New Castle. Just three days after their daughter, Isabella, was born, two caseworkers arrived with two police officers to take her away. Liz had failed a drug test, administered by the hospital without her knowledge while she was in labor.

Read more »

Chalk up another victory against guilty-until-proven-innocent drug testing policies in public schools

We're now 2-0 against PA school districts who want to force students to pee in a cup in order to join the debate team (or scrapbooking club, or the golf team, or in one of client's cases, Junior Students Against Substance Abuse). A Pike County judge just issued an order preventing the Delaware Valley School District from enforcing its unconstitutional policy requiring students to submit to random drug testing to participate in extracurricular activities and to drive to school.

In his opinion, Judge Joseph Kameen said, "This case involves a fundamental right - that of the Plaintiffs' privacy. Plaintiffs in this matter are forced into making an unconstitutional choice between not participating in extracurricular activities, sports, or parking at school and allowing DVSD to violate their privacy." He later added, "DVSD has failed to show a solid reason for [this policy]…. Granting the plaintiff's request certainly does not harm the public interest. Rather, it will protect it."

Kudos to our clients, sisters A.K. and M.K and their parents, Glenn and Kathy Kiederer, for not taking the easy way out and instead choosing to stand up for their rights and the rights of ALL Delaware Valley School District students.

Read more about this case, M.K. v. the Delaware Valley School District, and our other recent student drug testing case, M.T. v. Panther Valley School District.

The war on the poor continues: Drug tests for public aid

The war on the poor has been opened up on multiple fronts- in Washington, DC, and in state capitols around the country, including Harrisburg. Just at the ACLU, we've been addressing the U.S. House's proposal to cut family planning funding, including to our friends at Planned Parenthood, where many people with lower incomes go for a wide variety of services. And in Harrisburg, we're dealing with Senate Bill 9, mandating government-issued identification for public aid. (There's more on our opposition to this bill here.)

And those are just a few issues that fall within the ACLU's mission. Our friends at allied organizations are dealing with this full on assault in a broader way.

Today we had another reminder of how easy it is for the powerful to go after the vulnerable. Last week a bipartisan group of nine state senators introduced Senate Bill 719. This bill would implement random drug testing for people who receive cash assistance. At least two media outlets are exploring the issue since one of the senators issued a press release.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania's opposition to this bill can be summed up in three words- ineffective, expensive, and unconstitutional.

Ineffective. Statistics from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism have found that the rate of drug use among public aid recipients is no different from the general population. SB 719 singles out this particular population for extra scrutiny.

Expensive. Drug testing is expensive. It requires financial resources to give the tests, ensure confidentiality, and to run checks to guard against false positives from prescription drugs and other legal substances, like poppy seeds. Numerous states have cited costs as the reason for not starting such a program.

The federal government has a drug testing program for its employees. It found that it spends $77,000 for every one positive drug test because so few people test positive.

Unconstitutional. A drug test is a search, and under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the government cannot conduct this type of broad-based search. The government must have reason to suspect a person is using illegal substances before mandating a drug test.

Michigan is the one state where a law like SB 719 passed. It was struck down by the court of appeals for the reasons cited above.

I'm not a fan of using violent language like "war" or "assault," but the types of initiatives that lawmakers are now pursuing suggest nothing less than an all-out war on the poor. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail in the PA Senate, and SB 719 will go nowhere fast.

The failed- and fatal- war on drugs

If you have anything resembling a heart, you can't help but be moved by the death of Philadelphia police officer Sgt. Timothy Simpson. Regardless of how I feel about their lobbying efforts at the state legislature and the tactics of some officers, we all recognize the tragedy that has befallen the city with five officers killed in the line of duty in the last 13 months.

And as a parent, I always well up a bit when some tragedy befalls a family. Sgt. Simpson leaves behind three kids, two in high school and one in the fifth grade.

Sgt. Simpson died last Monday, November 17, when his cruiser was hit by a fleeing suspect. This article from last week lays out the history of the suspect, William Allan Foster.

As I read this article, I couldn't help but think of what an utter failure the war on drugs is. For more than 20 years, Mr. Foster has been in and out of prison for drug and drug-related offenses.

According to court records, Foster had been prosecuted for more than two dozen crimes in Bucks County alone. Most, officials said, were property crimes - burglaries or thefts of tools or merchandise that he could fence for heroin money.

On the fateful day when he hit Sgt. Simpson's cruiser, Foster was fleeing apprehension after a drug buy. He had $30 worth of heroin in his vehicle.

I don't know if anyone ever reached out to Foster to help him or if he ever made efforts to get clean. Maybe he did and failed. What's clear, though, is that our punitive approach to drug use is nothing short of tragic. Our prisons and jails are filled beyond their breaking point, and people are dying because our political leaders fail to approach this with clarity and maturity.

Our communities can't afford the war on drugs. Our state corrections department and county prisons can't handle the results of the war on drugs. And we don't want any more dead police officers, fallen by desperate users looking for that next high.

It's time to end this failed policy.

For more information about the ACLU's drug law reform positions, visit www.aclu.org/drugpolicy.

Andy in Harrisburg

Let Mom get happy!

A friend of mine is struggling with a tough choice. His mother, in her 80s, is dying. She has cancer and the tumors have reached her brain. She is deteriorating. Her concept of linear time has gone out the window. She thinks it's day when it's night. She'll put a pot on a hot stove and forget about it.

My friend's mother is a non-believer. She is sure no after-life awaits her. So she is scared. Terribly scared. The anti-anxiety medication she has been taking is no longer working. When he was visiting his mother recently, my friend went to her doctor and asked for, as he put it, "a happy pill" that would help her forget that soon, terribly soon, she will be leaving this world.

The doctor prescribed morphine, a really big bottle of it. But his mother has been asking for something else, a drug with fewer side effects, one that doesn't involve needles, one that will let her appreciate her remaining moments without sending her into a stupor. She's asked her son to score her some marijuana.

My friend lives in a state in the Northeast. His mother lives in one of those states in the Northwest that has taken the position that maybe if medical marijuana might help dying cancer patients, than who are we to judge and prosecute? And really, don't we have better things to worry about than suffering old ladies toking a little bit of pot? But even in such enlightened states, getting access to medical marijuana can be difficult.

And my friend is on this side of the country. And his mother is on the other. He will be returning west soon, but because of our draconian federal drug laws, delivering marijuana across state lines remains a pretty serious crime.

But his mother is scared. What does he do? What would you do?

The ACLU's position on the medical necessity defense for medical marijuana is this:

Medical marijuana is the only hope that some seriously ill patients have for relieving chronic pain, intractable nausea and the other side effects of chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and HIV/AIDS medications. Yet the Drug Enforcement Agency continues to prosecute sick people under federal law.

Even in the 11 states where medical marijuana is legal under state law, patients may have their assets seized, their medical marijuana destroyed, face massive fines and be imprisoned by federal courts. Federal prosecutors and judges often bar juries from hearing testimony about patients' medical need for marijuana and instead present these patients as run-of-the-mill drug users.

Here's a video of the Asylum Street Spankers that brilliantly illustrates the insanity of this nation's War on Drugs.

Lauri in York