The initiative campaign against the new jail, I-100, fell short of its signature goal. I-100 wouldn’t have directly prevented the jail from being built. It would have only forced the city to analyze alternatives, examine the racial disparity in the prison population, and then put the question up for a vote. In the failure, however, there appears to be one potential bright spot [emphasis mine]:
The deadline for turning in the signatures is Thursday and theoretically the campaign could ask for a 20-day extension, said campaign manager Natalie Novak.
However, Novak said the campaign raised an issue “no one really knew about before.” Additionally, the county has said it would allow cities to bring people to the jail for misdemeanors beyond 2012. The county had said the cities had to stop before 2012, setting off the debate over building a jail.
I’m not entirely sure what that means for the overall jail debate now. If anyone has more specifics, please feel free to share in the comments or email me directly. I still remain puzzled that with our economy in the condition it’s in that we’re considering such a costly infrastructure investment that hardly anyone wants and is not necessary. And despite what many I-100 opponents have insisted, we’re not diverting anywhere near as many people as we should be. This was made abundantly clear in a report from Nina Shapiro at Seattle Weekly back in January [again, emphasis mine]:
While liberal groups have fought for years for more lenient drug policies, our state’s financial woes are helping accomplish what their arguments alone could not. This is true at the county level as well. Faced with a $5 million budget cut to his office, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg in October started kicking felony cases involving less than three grams of narcotics down to District Court, where they are prosecuted as misdemeanors. He says the move affects two-thirds of his caseload.
Meanwhile, the King County jail is already nearly full, and the county has said it will no longer have room for misdemeanor prisoners from the cities as of 2012. So Seattle and several suburban cities have started planning to build a new multimillion-dollar jail of their own.
There just isn’t any ambiguity about this. When two-thirds of our county prosecutor’s caseload involves people with less than .003 kg of drugs or less, our local court systems are being clogged with low-level drug offenders. If you hear any local politician talking about how we already do a good job of diverting these folks out of the system, they’re lying. We don’t. In fact, we shouldn’t be arresting any of them in the first place, which is what Portugal decided to do in 2001, and it’s been an unquestioned success.
This problem is understood in the most morally bankrupt light when we see the affect that aggressively prosecuting low-level drug offenses has on the African-American community:
While African-Americans are represented in King County average daily jail population by six times their percentage of population, five Seattle public schools that primarily serve African-American communities were closed this year to save the school system a meager $3 million.
Somehow, the city of Seattle had $110 million for a new jail, but couldn’t seem to locate $3 million to save some schools. I think that says everything you need to know about how Seattle’s city leadership views its minority communities.
S. King County Cities (Renton, Auburn, Des Moines, Federal Way, Tukwila, Burien, Seatac) are proceding to build a facility in Des Moines at a cost of $80+ million.
Eastside municipalities are pursuing a similar facility.
Your taxpayer dollars at work. Apparently, raising incomes and reforming draconian drug laws are simply beyond our abilities.
Ah, but think of how many jobs it makes for builders and guards! See–it’s not a prison, it’s a stimulus program. Krawk!
Why don’t the good liberals vote the racist republicans out of office and put those good biden style democrats in office.
Oops, it was the biden type democrats responsible for the disparity.
Who was it responsible for that “use black cocaine (crack) go to jail, use white coke (powder) get probation” law?
If I was the dictator of the free world, all drugs would be legal… until it infringed upon others. Including alcoholics raising children.
Who was it responsible for that “use black cocaine (crack) go to jail, use white coke (powder) get probation” law?
That was a bi-partisan failure. To say that only Democrats were on that train is disingenuous.
[Deleted – off topic]
Is alternet.org a right-wing website? If not…
During his 35 years in Congress, political observers note that no Democrat has sponsored “more damaging drug war legislation” than Joe Biden. Biden led the charge in the Senate for passage of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which — among its numerous notorious provisions — re-established mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes, expanded the use of federal asset forfeiture laws, and established the racially biased 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for the possession of crack versus powder cocaine. (During the mid-’80s, it was hardly unusual for “liberals” such as Biden to endorse punitive drug policies, which at the time enjoyed virtually unanimous support from Congress.)
http://www.alternet.org/electi....._policies/
I think this speaks much about biden, the same biden that made the observation that obama was the first clean, bright, articulate affrican american.
Sen. Biden said he recognized now that the bill was based on myth. Much of it hyped by the daily press, which in turn fed the National phobia about drugs, and pushed politicians to support more and more draconian methods of repression.
…
Sen. Biden, unfortunately, wasn’t alone in the business of making laws
out of myth. Former US President William J. Clinton’s Crime bill added some
60 offenses punishable by the death penalty: and his Prison Litigation Reform
act (PLRA), which essentially slammed the doors shut for millions of
prisoners who sought to file suits in Federal courts, was similarly based on myth.
Good to see that someone like biden that claims he has such a high IQ to make decisions for the country based on myth.
Is alternet.org a right-wing website? If not…
During his 35 years in Congress, political observers note that no Democrat has sponsored “more damaging drug war legislation” than Joe Biden. Biden led the charge in the Senate for passage of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which — among its numerous notorious provisions — re-established mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes, expanded the use of federal asset forfeiture laws, and established the racially biased 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for the possession of crack versus powder cocaine. (During the mid-’80s, it was hardly unusual for “liberals” such as Biden to endorse punitive drug policies, which at the time enjoyed virtually unanimous support from Congress.)
http://www.alternet.org/electi....._policies/
I think this speaks much about biden, the same biden that made the observation that obama was the first clean, bright, articulate affrican american.
Sen. Biden said he recognized now that the bill was based on myth. Much of it hyped by the daily press, which in turn fed the National phobia about drugs, and pushed politicians to support more and more draconian methods of repression.
…
Sen. Biden, unfortunately, wasn’t alone in the business of making laws
out of myth. Former US President William J. Clinton’s Crime bill added some
60 offenses punishable by the death penalty: and his Prison Litigation Reform
act (PLRA), which essentially slammed the doors shut for millions of
prisoners who sought to file suits in Federal courts, was similarly based on myth.
Good to see that someone like biden that claims he has such a high IQ to make decisions for the country based on myth.
If he was responsible for laws based on myth, shouldn’t he get those laws removed from the books? What has he done to correct his mistake?
Back to the subject, at least more so than Joe Biden’s IQ:
The City of Seattle does not fund–or defund–the Seattle School District. School funds are state/federal, not city. I’m not sure why more journalists don’t point this out, because just about every member of the public seems to have the wrong impression.
We, (Yakima) had a police officer,pulled over, blow a .175 and .183
on a breathelyzer;over twice the legal limit.
What did this cop get for her infraction?
Three days of community work.I guess alcohol isn’t
considered a drug;and driving under its influence
is okay;since apparently it isn’t considered
a drug.
@6
Um, how does any of that challenge what I said? In fact, I wrote a series of posts highlighting Biden’s drug war history called “Joe Biden’s War” back in January.
If he was responsible for laws based on myth, shouldn’t he get those laws removed from the books? What has he done to correct his mistake?
Um, he’s introduced a bill to fix it, dumbass.
Nothing you’ve written there refutes anything I’ve said.
The bigger question is still, “why are you here?” Have you not humiliated yourself enough?
@7
Sarah, thanks for the feedback. Is the funding for the jail the same? Is that also state/federal?
@7: Dead wrong. Local school levies provide added funding for schools for added ciricula to capital improvements. True, this is raised by the SD’s, not city municipalities, but funding is not limited to “state/federal” as you imply.
@10: Form taxing authority of some kind–issue bonds. Maybe some federal cash. That’s the way it’s usually done.
@12
Thanks for the updates.
@6, motherfucker,
Yes, agree the PRLA is bad law, introduced by GOP ‘law-n-order’ extremists, passed by a GOP Congress, signed (alas) by some fool president calling himself a “Democrat” because it was a rider to a larger bill, and upheld by a conservative activist Supreme Court.
The legislation is a total failure as far as its stated goals are concerned, an embarrasment, an affront to humanity, and most likely unconstitutional if we had some Supremes who could actually hand down reasoned decisions rather than grind ideological axes.
But then, you can’t have everything.
There does seem to be a big disconnect between what happens in city politics and what happens in the school district.
Yes, school district decisions are made by the school board and not the city council/mayor, but the Seattle Public Schools have been pretty bad for a long time, and you’d think that people like the Mayor, who’s so proud of touting Seattle as a ” world class city” would take a little more interest in the school district, which is very far from being ” world class”. But who cares about the schools? We’ve got a “world class” sculpture park.
Maybe if the schools were better there wouldn’t be as a great of a need for a new jail?
@15
Maybe if the schools were better there wouldn’t be as a great of a need for a new jail?
That’s the overriding point here.