Faith-Based Resources on U.S. Drug Policies

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)

• Mennonite Central Committee U.S. – Office on Justice and Peacebuilding
  21 South 12th Street, P0 Box 500, Akron, PA 17501
  Phone: (717) 859-1152
  Email: lsa@mcc.org
  Web: mcc.org/us/peacebuilding/
  includes educational resources on Crime and Justice and Mennonite Mediation Service.
• Resources on Criminal Justice, Prisons, Restorative Justice and Public Policy
  washington.mcc.org/issues/crimejustice

Other Faith-Based Resources

• American Friends Service Committee
  1501 Cherry Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102
  Phone: (215) 241-7000
  Web: www.afsc.org
  — then, search for war on drugs
• Sojourners Magazine
  • Nonviolence and the Drug War, by Margaret Regan (Sojourners magazine, February 2013)
    The U.S. and Mexican governments have tried to battle drug violence with more violence. It hasn’t worked. Gandhian groups in Mexico offer another way.
  • “The Other War” (Sojourners magazine, May-June 2003 issue):
    • Equal Justice?, by Sanho Tree
      Drugs, race, and some pretty skewed numbers
    • The War at Home, by Sanho Tree
      Our jails overflow with nonviolent drug offenders. Have we reached the point where the drug war causes more harm than the drugs themselves?
    • They Do It Because They Make Money, by Sojourners Editors
      A conservative Republican asks: What would happen if there were no profit in drugs?
    • Beyond ‘Just Say No’
      by Eric E. Sterling
      Over the years, churches have had a lot to say about alcohol and drug policy. Some of it has been helpful.

U.S. drug policies and alternatives

• The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation
  www.cjpf.org
• The Drug Policy Alliance
  www.drugpolicy.org
• Drug War Facts
  www.drugwarfacts.org
  Drug War Facts is the best resource for quick, footnoted information on most aspects of drug policy. It is updated regularly and cites mainly government-funded studies and professional journals.
• The Effective National Drug Control Strategy, 1999
  www.csdp.org/edcs
• Families Agains Mandatory Minimums
  www.famm.org
• The Washington Office on Latin America
  www.wola.org
• Human Rights Watch
  www.hrw.org
  Drug Arrests and Racial Disparity
  Table1718.pdf on drug use and arrests.
• Mother Jones
  www.motherjones.com
  “Debt to Society”: A special report (July 10, 2001) on the real cost of prisons.
  This resource includes commentary on a number of prison issues, including state by state charts and statistics. (However, it has not been updated since 2001.)
• November Coalition
  november.org
  Graphs of prison statistics.
  The November Coalition provides educational resources about drug-related incarceration that began with President Nixon’s “War on Drugs”. The November Coalition seeks to show that current policies of the U.S. drug war are unnecessary and counter-productive. They also advocate for “drug war prisoners”.
• A Drug Abuse Policy That Fails Everyone, by Jamie Fellner (The Huffington Post, August 10, 2010)
• In Anti-Drug Policy, Race Remains, by Jamie Fellner (The Huffington Post, March 17, 2009)
• US: Drug Arrests Skewed by Race, National Data on 1980-2007 Cases Show Huge Disparities (March 2, 2009)
  The 20-page report, “Decades of Disparity: Drug Arrests and Race in the United States,” says that adult African Americans were arrested on drug charges at rates that were 2.8 to 5.5 times as high as those of white adults in every year from 1980 through 2007, the last year for which complete data were available. About one in three of the more than 25.4 million adult drug arrestees during that period was African American.
• Pennsylvania DDAP (Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs).
• Drug Policy in Pennsylvania (drugpolicy.org)
• Other sources for drug penalty information:
  normi.org,
  drugandnarcoticsattorney.com, and
  drugpossessionlaws.com
• History of Drug Laws
• Drug Courts,
  NADCP Brief in Response to DPA & JPI Attacks on Drug Courts

Documentary Video

• The House I Live In, documentary video and related resources.

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal

• Portugal makes peace with the war on drugs
• Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies, by Glenn Greenwald, Cato White Paper,” CATO Institute (Washington, DC: 2009).
• International Narcotics Control Strategy Report: Volume I, Drug and Chemical Control (Washington, DC: US Dept. of State Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, March 2012).
• What can we learn from the Portugese decriminalization of drugs? [full report][abstract], by British Journal of Criminology (London, UK: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, November 2010).

U.S. Drug, Crime, and Prison Statistics

• Causes of Death (2000 data), CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Causes of Death (2009 data)
• Crime and Incarceration Rates
  — Pennsylvania, compared with other states
  (violent crimes and property crimes)
• The Price of Prisons, Pennsylvania – Fact Sheet [PDF]
• U.S. Drug War Statistics
• Incarceration Rates by Race — many graphs/figures
• One in 100 behind bars in America (Pew Center report)
• Incarceration in the United States, including race (2009, 2010)
• Incarceration Rates and analysis (prisonpolicy.org)
• Correctional Populations in the United States, 2011 (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statics) [PDF]
• Fiscal and Structural Reform – Solutions to Pennsylvania’s Growing Inmate Population,
  Jack Wagner, Auditor General (Special Report, January 2011) [PDF]

Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) — program to reduce Pennsylvania’s prison population

• justicereinvestment.org — national organization working with many states, now including Pennsylvania.
• pamatters.com

Note: Pennsylvania SB100 was signed into law in July 2012, and HB135 was signed in Oct. 2012.