Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

The Gov­ern­ment's lat­est sug­ges­tion to tack­le our crime prob­lem is to de­ny bail to any­one in pos­ses­sion of firearms or drugs. On the sur­face this sounds sen­si­ble but the pro­pos­al as­so­ciates two dis­tinct of­fens­es un­der one um­brel­la, when there are clear dis­tinc­tions.Guns are tools of vi­o­lence, de­signed to harm and kill peo­ple. Yes, peo­ple get killed over drugs, and in some sit­u­a­tions peo­ple al­so die from tak­ing drugs, but to say firearms and drugs are equiv­a­lent is disin­gen­u­ous.

While it's fair to say that no drugs (le­gal and il­le­gal) are good for chil­dren and teenagers–or per­sons with po­ten­tial chem­i­cal im­bal­ances–var­i­ous drugs (le­gal and il­le­gal) have dif­fer­ent "lethal­i­ty" rates.Lethal­i­ty is how sci­en­tists analyse the safe­ty mar­gin of a drug, i.e. how many times the stan­dard dosage does one have to take to risk im­me­di­ate death.

Pro­fes­sor Robert Gale, who has stud­ied the rel­a­tive risk of recre­ation­al drugs for the last 20 years, sug­gests that mar­i­jua­na–in the con­text of lethal­i­ty–is 100 times safer than al­co­hol or co­caine.Now, of course, ad­dic­tion and sub­stance abuse of any kind, le­gal or il­le­gal, is prob­lem­at­ic for every­one–the drug tak­er, their friends and fam­i­ly, the wider so­ci­ety–but the Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al to refuse bail for any­one held for mar­i­jua­na, for ex­am­ple, is not about re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

Ar­rest­ing some­one for recre­ation­al drug use with no hope of bail will not re­form the per­son ar­rest­ed or im­pact the drug in­dus­try. In the main, it ac­tu­al­ly cre­ates more crim­i­nals.Some crim­i­nol­o­gists note that re­cidi­vism rates are high and grow­ing be­cause the jail ex­pe­ri­ence makes a per­son more like­ly to com­mit fu­ture crimes.

This is due to the en­vi­ron­ment of a prison where­in an of­fend­er makes new crim­i­nal con­tacts, learns how to be a bet­ter crim­i­nal, and al­so re­ceives a crim­i­nal record that in­hibits pos­si­ble fu­ture jobs.

If this is the case, does it make sense to take a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach against those caught with drugs? No bail for the pos­ses­sion of firearms makes sense–it takes a gun­man off the street; but to ar­rest peo­ple for mi­nor, non-vi­o­lent drug of­fens­es like pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na, stamp them as crim­i­nals, and then con­sign them to a sec­ond-class life? Re­al­ly?

Let's not for­get that if we are talk­ing about lock­ing up young men for mar­i­jua­na with­out bail we are ig­nor­ing a fun­da­men­tal fact of life–young peo­ple will make mis­takes, es­pe­cial­ly those who are al­ready so­ci­ety's vic­tims due to pover­ty, abuse, bro­ken-down neigh­bour­hoods and sup­port net­works. Should we be pun­ish­ing youth­ful mis­takes or help the young per­son who makes them?

And here it is im­por­tant to high­light that young men who make mis­takes from our more wealthy neigh­bour­hoods and com­mu­ni­ties are not treat­ed in the same way as the young men from our poor neigh­bour­hoods who make the same mis­take. When the chil­dren of those with mon­ey and con­tacts act out and get in trou­ble, some­times for drugs, or fights, the re­sponse is of­ten to sup­port them, get them coun­selling, send them to the Mount.

A sup­port net­work is of­ten put in mo­tion too and the young per­son will get help in turn­ing their life around. Not to men­tion ex­pen­sive lawyers who oft times seem to dis­cov­er mag­ic ways of get­ting charges thrown out or less­ened.Why have we made a so­ci­ety where we pun­ish the chil­dren of one class group more than the chil­dren of an­oth­er class group?

We can­not sim­ply ar­rest our way out of the drug prob­lem. We need to treat the drug prob­lem as a pub­lic health is­sue, not just a law en­force­ment one. And we need more rad­i­cal think­ing than class war­fare, sprin­kled with his­tor­i­cal race pol­i­tics. Push­ing peo­ple in­to the arms of the crim­i­nal world for some­thing vast num­bers have done and will do is self-de­feat­ing.

Now here is a rad­i­cal pro­pos­al many might be un­com­fort­able hear­ing. It is one that re­flects the lo­cal cul­tur­al and so­cial use of mar­i­jua­na in this coun­try for over 150 years, and it re­flects the sci­ence sur­round­ing drugs and ad­dic­tion.De­crim­i­nalise or le­galise mar­i­jua­na. Like the le­gal-drug al­co­hol, tax, reg­u­late, and ed­u­cate peo­ple about it. Have the young men who want to work in such an in­dus­try train in hor­ti­cul­ture, mar­ket­ing, and en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

The shift could re­duce prison pop­u­la­tions, halt the in­crease in new crim­i­nals, and change the cul­ture of puni­tive in­ter­ven­tions and war-like re­pres­sion, pro­vid­ing some jobs and a way out of what is cur­rent­ly a crim­i­nal en­ter­prise.And you can still ar­rest with­out bail any and all the peo­ple car­ry­ing un­li­censed firearms.

�2 Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine