Facing a $315 million shortfall, Board President Toni Preckwinkle announced a 5% spending cut and threatened layoffs if necessary. Preckwinkle last week discussed the idea of merely ticketing pot smokers with Chicago Police Superintendant Garry McCarthy, and while no decision has yet been taken, the notion is percolating through the police bureaucracy. +

“This is America. Nobody deserves to be treated as a black man.”

Marc Emery remains a political prisoner in a country that is rapidly accepting that marijuana prohibition is a failure. Contact your Member of Parliament and demand the federal Canadian government bring Emery home.

(via Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy)

The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people. Below I set out numerous examples of these facts. Read more

(via Counter Punch)

Justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country. Between 2.3m and 2.4m Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under “correctional” supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan. Overcrowding is the norm. Federal prisons house 60% more inmates than they were designed for. State lock-ups are only slightly less stuffed.

The system has three big flaws, say criminologists. First, it puts too many people away for too long. Second, it criminalises acts that need not be criminalised. Third, it is unpredictable. Many laws, especially federal ones, are so vaguely written that people cannot easily tell whether they have broken them. Read more

(via The Economist)

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