From: kadie@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: [Republicans] On Civil Liberties and Drugs
Keywords: New-Speak
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 04:43:20 GMT

[Here are the corresponding parts of the ACLU's suggested platform - Carl]

[...]
|
| * Institutional racism permeates our criminal justice system. Police
|   brutality is routine in minority communities. Although blacks are
|   only 12 percent of drug-users, they are 38 percent of those arrested
|   for drug offenses. One out of every four young black men is in prison,
|   on parole or on probation more than are in college.
==================================
[...]

THREE -- A REALISTIC APPROACH TO CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

==================================
| * The United States now leads the world in incarceration. With more
|   than one million people behind parts, we imprison 426 per 100,000
|   people compared to South Africa, the runner-up with 333.
| 
| * Harsh, mandatory sentencing laws have caused our prison population
|   to double in the past decade. Congress has passed 60 of these laws,
|   mainly for drug offenses. As a result, more than half the inmates in
|   the federal prison system are drug offenders, and most of them
|   committed non-violent crimes. The cost: $20 billion a year.  At the
|   same time, only four percent of the estimated 6.5 million Americans
|   who are addicted to drugs have access to publicly-funded treatment
|   programs.
| 
| * The prison explosion is placing enormous burdens on state budgets.
|   It is estimated that states will require an extra $35 billion to build
|   and operate prisons over the next five years just to keep up with the
|   incarceration rate.
==================================

Fear of violent crime grips the citizenry, from our largest urban
centers to our rural areas. For too long, our elected leaders have
played upon that fear, especially during election years. "If only we
could unshackle the police, impose longer sentences, abolish parole
and build more prisons, crime could be controlled," they proclaim. But
while such "solutions may win votes, they have little, if any, impact
on the crime rate.  Thousands of new laws have increased sentences,
expanded the use of the death penalty and eroded civil liberties. Yet
these measures have failed: Instead of making us crime free, they have
just made us less free.

The truth is there is no significant correlation between building
prisons and controlling crime. The reasons are simple. First, crime
rates correlate, not with the rate of imprisonment, but with the
proportion of young people in the population and the percentage of
those young people who are unemployed, uneducated and face a bleak
future.

Second, most violent criminals do not even reach the criminal justice
system. More than 35 million serious crimes are committed each year in
the U.S., but only about three million result in arrest, and only
several hundred thousand in imprisonment. Sentencing policies address
the wrong end -- and only one tiny piece -- of the problem. The cry
for more prisons and harsher sentences is used by some politicians to
divert an anxious public's attention -- and public resources -- away
from the real problem.

It's time to get serious about crime and punishment. Every community
must have adequate police services. Our courts must have the capacity
to deliver justice _and_ swift and certain punishment when warranted.
Prison space must be reserved for truly violent offenders; for
nonviolent offenders, the use of alternative sanctions must be
expanded.

Today, many in the law enforcement community agree that constitutional
rights are no impediment to effective law enforcement, so we must stop
scapegoating the Constitution. More and more law enforcers also agree
that we must stop squandering limited resources on ineffective
measures and respond instead to the social problems that are the
breeding grounds of crime: joblessness, broken families, poor
education, inadequate housing. We must stop treating drug abuse as a
crime and treat it, instead, as the public health problem it is.

It has become fashionable in some circles to claim that the social
programs of the 1960s and '70s "didn't work." What is crystal clear
today is that the crime control policies of the 1980s have not worked.
New approaches, based on new premises, are needed.


FOUR -- A BILL OF RIGHTS FOR ALL WORKING PEOPLE

The largest group of forgotten people in this country consists of
non-unionized, private sector employees -- 80 percent of the American
workforce. Victims of the l9th century "employment-at-will doctrine,
they can be fired for any reason, or for no reason at all. They can be
subjected to tests and searches that are degrading and unrelated to
the work they were hired to perform. They can be punished for engaging
in legal activities in the privacy of their own homes.  Employees need
and deserve protection against such unfair and arbitrary denials of
their rights, which often leads to widespread human suffering.
Researchers have found a strong connection between job loss and
alcoholism, mental illness and even suicide.

==================================
| * In Pennsylvania, an employee was fired because he pointed out
|   serious safety defects in his employer's products. At least 200,000
|   Americans are unjustly fired every year.
|
| * In California, a job applicant was denied a job because he reused to
|   answer questions about his sex life on a "psychological test." At
|   least two million job applicants are required to take such tests ever
|   year.
|
| * In Indiana, a worker was fired because she smoked cigarettes in her
|   own home. At least 6,000 American companies now punish employees for
|   private behavior, such as drinking any alcohol or riding a motorcycle.
==================================

American institutions have, thus far, failed to address the problem of
workplace rights. The Bill of Rights does not apply to privately-owned
businesses, and our courts have been unwilling to offer legal
protection to private sector employees. While federal and state
legislation has addressed the problem of job discrimination based on
race, gender, religion and disability, other important issues like
privacy, free speech and due process have not been treated seriously.
Organized labor has traditionally been the chief defender of people's
rights at work. But the percentage of American workers represented by
unions has declined to only 16 percent, leaving the vast majority of
workers unprotected.

Although many employers argue that expanding legal rights in the workplace
would make American industry less competitive, the evidence shows
otherwise. The success of companies that have adopted enlightened
personnel policies confirms that people work more productively in
environments where their rights are respected.

American works need their own Bill of Rights that provides for freedom
of speech, the right to organize, the right to privacy, fair and equal
treatment and legal protection.


                              * *

As we approach the millennium, our country faces a time of both danger
and opportunity. If we do not confront the social disintegration that
has been worsened during the past decade, we are looking at a future
of violence and repression that will ensnare all of us in its web. If
we do not become responsive to the demands of _all_ our citizens
--women, men, minorities, artists and working people of every sexual
orientation--for liberty and respect, opportunity and hope, the United
States will cease to be an inspiring beacon of freedom, creativity,
enlightenment and great achievement, and will instead become a symbol
of despair, destructiveness and decline.

Let us look for guidance to the original principles upon which this
nation was founded: the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
[...]

- Carl

ANNOTATED REFERENCES

(All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.)

=================
civil-liberty/campaign-92.aclu
=================
The American Civil Liberties Union's planks for its "Campaign for the
Bill of Rights '92". The planks are 1) a national campaign against
bigotry and racism, 2) constitutional protection for a woman's right
to choose, 3) a realistic approach to crime and punishment, 4) a Bill
of Rights for all working people.

=================
=================

These document(s) are available by anonymous ftp (the preferred
method) and by email. To get the file(s) via ftp, do an anonymous ftp
to ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4), and get file(s):

  pub/academic/civil-liberty/campaign-92.aclu

To get the file(s) by email, send email to archive-server@eff.org.
Include the line(s) (be sure to include the space before the file
name):

send acad-freedom/civil-liberty campaign-92.aclu
-- 
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.politics.usa.constitution,alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs,alt.psychoactives,misc.legal