Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 24, 1995 TAG: 9507250019
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD CARTWRIGHT AUSTIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On July 2, The New York Times published a front-page expose of drug trafficking in prisons across America under the headline, ``Bars don't stop flow of drugs into the prisons.''
The three-part series concludes that ``Drugs are seeping, and in some cases flowing, into the nation's prisons as the war on drugs has packed them with drug dealers and drug users. ... Resourceful inmates can maintain their addictions with the help of friends, relatives and corrupt prison employees.''
An inmate at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., convicted for marijuana trafficking, responded by telephone, ``Right now, I'm in a sea of heroin, and anybody who wants it can get it.'' In February, the Mississippi State Auditor revealed that the state penitentiary at Parchman had such an oversupply of illegal drugs that inmate dealers were actually smuggling dope out to the surrounding communities to get a better price.
Eight hundred thousand of the nation's 1 million inmates have a history of drug use. Many are convicted drug dealers who are resourceful enough to secure a supply so they can continue dealing behind bars. The Times describes how drugs are smuggled to prisons by relatives, visitors and underpaid prison employees, often using pouches that fit into body cavities. In the typical prison, drugs sell for three to 10 times what they bring on the street.
Prison administrators generally deny that the problems exist, for obvious reasons. Don Cabana, former prison warden in Mississippi, Missouri and Florida, reports that correction officials often feel the need to present prisons to the public as pristine institutions of reform. ``It's public-relations gimmickry,'' he said. ``If a warden acknowledges he has a drug problem, he's going to pay a terrible price.''
The bottom line appears to be that prisons in rural Southwest Virginia, built to house inmates from our cities, will bring big-city drug trafficking in their wake. Prison visitors who need some traveling money may unload some drugs in our communities and at our schools. Dealers behind bars with a stash of cash may corrupt some of our neighbors who work as guards, spreading the drug network. The social costs may be far higher than the economic benefits.
America's ``War on Drugs'' is an utter failure. Building more prisons to house and guard drug users - rather than supporting jobs, education and rehabilitation - burdens the taxpayer with the most expensive alternative, while spreading the drug disease to rural areas. Our children do not need to become the next casualties in this losing war.
Prisons have become the missionary outposts of drug culture, the settlement schools of degradation. I don't think we need them here.
Richard Cartwright Austin is a Presbyterian minister who lives in Dungannon and teaches with Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center.
by CNB