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Synthetic Marijuana Poses Big Problem for Bureau of Prisons

  Federal inmates get random urine tests for signs of use of drugs like heroin, cocaine or marijuana. But in the alcohol and drug rehabilitation web newsletter The Fix, former federal inmate turned-writer Seth Ferranti, who served time for an LSD offense, argues the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has yet to come to grips with

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Retroactivity of Drug Guidelines Amendments

Today, the United States Sentencing Commission has scheduled a vote as to whether the November 2014 Amendments to the federal drug sentencing guidelines will apply retroactively. The new Amendments reduce the drug sentencing guidelines by 2 points and can result in a sentence reduction of 6 months to 2 years for many inmates. Most legal

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Marriage, Minorities and Drug Sentencing

By Jean Trounstine

An interesting article in the NYTimes last week made me think about marriage and incarceration and the inevitable link to how we send people to prison for years due to the so-called “war on drugs.”

Charles Blow, NYTimes columnist, quoted public health expert Ernest Drucker’s well-known 2011 book, A Plague of Prisons with the following stats:

■ “The risk of divorce is high among men going to prison, reaching 50 percent within a few years after incarceration.”

■ “The marriage rate for men incarcerated in prisons and jails is lower than the American average. For blacks and Hispanics, it is lower still.”

■ “Unmarried couples in which the father has been incarcerated are 37 percent less likely to be married one year after the child’s birth than similar couples in which the father has never been incarcerated.”

And guess why so many black and Hispanic men are in prison? You got it, the so-called “drug war.” Or as Blow calls it “the disastrous drug war,” or “a war on marijuana waged primarily against young black men, even though they use the drug at nearly the same rate as whites.” With television and the media, “reefer” has been glamorized to “reefer madness,” and indeed the sentencing of reefer is madness.

Image courtesy jeantrounstine.com

The drug war has brutalized so many with lengthy sentences. How can these sentences not affect marriage and families? Take for example Stephanie Nodd who according to her page on Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM)’s website served 21years of a 30-year sentence in a federal prison in Florida for a crack cocaine conspiracy she had been involved in for just one month. FAMM was able to influence the Sentencing Commission to make new guidelines and Stephanie was released.

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Methods to Approach Reforming the American Prison System

There’s little doubt that the criminal justice system in the United States is in need of reform. Much greater than population or crime rate growth are the number of people behind bars and the costs associated with keeping them locked up. Even small and inexpensive programs can have profound results in terms of lowering the

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Arizona Mother Accused of Drug Smuggling

By Dianne Frazee-Walker

A 42-year-old model citizen has an incredible attitude while sitting in a Mexican jail after being arrested for smuggling 12-pounds of marijuana. Yanira Maldonado, resident of Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, says she “has nothing to hide.”  Photo courtesy kmbc.com

Maldonado and her husband, Gary, were returning from her aunt’s funeral in Mexico when the bus they were traveling in was stopped at a military checkpoint 90 miles from the U.S. border. Mexican federales ordered all passengers out of the vehicle and searched the bus.

Maldonado’s nightmare began when 12-pounds of pot was found neatly packaged and taped under seat 39 where she was sitting. Maldonado automatically became a prime suspect for attempting to smuggle the parcels and was arrested on the spot. 

The Mormon woman raising seven children was initially shocked, but now she is calming down and believing she will be found innocent and be able to return home. Anna Soto, one of Maldonado’s daughters, knows her mother would never be guilty of smuggling drugs and anxiously wants her to return home where she belongs.

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