Behind the story: Life without parole for drugs

[neversickanymore]

Behind the story: Life without parole for drugs
by Jennifer Palmer
May 4, 2015

When I started working on a story about drug offenders serving life without parole for drugs, I had no idea how many handwritten letters would accumulate on the corner of my desk. After a few weeks of research, I had a handful of folks in mind that I wanted to hear from. But Oklahoman reporter Graham Brewer gave me the push to just write them all, and I did. There is now a stack of three dozen letters on my desk, and I expect to receive more, in part because an oversight by the Department of Corrections delayed my letters to the six women at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center.

Reading their stories, in their own words, was essential.

In addition to the letters, I spent hours analyzing prison data and digging through old court and police records. The Oklahoma City Police Department provided a report from 1979–the typewriter days–on one of Leland Dodd’s first strikes. Dodd is drug offender who has served the longest: 24 years and counting. I also tracked down two jurors from the 1998 trial of Richard Dopp. The jury attempted to refuse the mandatory life without parole sentence in his case by scratching it off the verdict form and writing “30 years” instead.

Not everyone will feel sympathy for these drug offenders, and that’s OK. But after spending so much time reading their personal stories in the past few months, I was reminded again and again that they are human. Humans make mistakes. And humans are capable of change.

“I never claimed to be an angel,” wrote Kevin Ott, on his 19th year of a life sentence. Addicted to meth, Ott racked up his three strikes within a few years.

http://newsok.com/behind-the-story-life-without-parole-for-drugs/article/5416173

 

[ThePharmacist4925]

Wow, this is some heavy stuff. Punishment over rehabilitation. The system makes it hard for drug users with arrest records to rebuild a life within society and so the easiest thing to do is go back to the drug use; a life they already know how to navigate. As the tallies are slashed by the fifth judges and police officers grow exhausted of dealing with an individual who doesn't seem to have progressed at all they just lock em' up and throw away the key... it's best for everyone right, they're safer from the drugs in there; well that individual has progressed further down the only road society had left for them. We don't help people get better. We don't aid in fighting the real war on drugs. We lock up people who received a crappy public education with teachers who didn't care about their future. Even if they had gotten a job, it would have just been one where they slaved for a corporation that didn't care about them; sure that is better than jail, but the theme is that we don't care about each other. "Stranger Danger" but I like most people. If I wasn't kept at an arm's length from almost everyone else in society, I'd probably like most of them. If I liked most of them, I would care about most of them. I don't think I'm the only one that cares about people, but we are taught to be at an arm's length at all times. How do we close the gap so we can know people enough to care about them. I want more people to care about. If we cared then maybe we could stop this nonsense of locking people up permanently for drug use. Maybe we could care enough help them instead of locking them in a cage so we didn't have to deal with them. Maybe the government could fight the cartels so we had less dirty drugs polluting our cities and ruining the lives of another generation of inner city kids. Maybe we could start treating them instead of arresting them. it's easier to arrest inner city kids than fight cartels right, because they're the problem. Maybe we could reform the rehabilitation business that profits on people continually relapsing and focus on treatment that actually produces long term results for people. Why are we locking people up permanently because the were born into neighborhood with shit schools and cheap bad drugs. Why aren't we fixing the real problem. Putting people in cages never solved anything and never will. It's just mean. It's not an issue of fair or unfair. it's an issue of right or wrong. It's evil.

 

[Jabberwocky]

These people get locked up because prisons are a business in the US. They couldn't care less what crime they committed.

 

[Flynnal]

Every time I hear about someone getting locked up for minor drug offences I get really nasty vibes. I cannot count the number of stories I've read about the people, both addicts and small time dealers who just sold pot and nothing else, getting put away for a long time for practically nothing.

The sad part is that the prison system is big money and they are only in this to make money. They don't care about the prisoners, they care about the money. That is all.

I wish they would send "doctors" who mutilate little boys to jail forever, but, just like the prison industry, male genital mutilation is very much a big business - they sell the foreskins to biotech and cosmetics testing companies for insane amounts of money. I was reading an article not too long ago, it was printed unfortunately and I can't just link to it on the web or I would do so, that one such "doctor", who is stonking rich, made over a million in one year just from infant circumcisions.

Scum like this will be enjoying a very comfortable retirement, meanwhile thousands and thousands of infants will be mutilated for life. Some of them will never be able to have an orgasm at all. When I was 12 my mother hanged herself. But I made a promise to myself, and I live solidly by the principle that you are as good as your word and that you should never break a promise, and that once you violate that principle your self-respect is gone for good. I am confident and certain of my word. That I swear on my mother's grave, God rest her soul, if I ever got my hands on any one of them that would be the end.