Naomi Long is the National Policy Coordinator at the Drug Policy Alliance’s WashingtonD.C. office. She came to the DPA after working with the Justice Policy Institute following her work on faith-based organizing in Wisconsin.

Re: Treatment over Incarceration

The citizens of DC recently passed Ballot Initiative 64 in the 2002 election. It got over 70% of the vote- more votes than the mayor. The initiative stated that non-violent drug offenders would not be sent directly to criminal justice system- but sent to treatment- and if treatment was not available they would by no means be incarcerated. It was based on a precedent of an emergency shelter homeless act.

But as soon as the board of elections certified the results, the mayor sued because he said it mandated funding. But that is a misreading of the initiative. It says that as a policy philosophy, addicted and low-level, non-violent offenders be treated by the public health system, not the criminal justice system. The goal was for a coalition of groups, including the Drug Policy Alliance, to help lobby for federal funding to cover costs. Well, the mayor won in the lower courts, but we have appealed to the superior court now. We are thinking we will hear back from the appellate court in August.

“I knew I wanted to organize.”

Q: How did you get involved in drug policy?

I was working at the Justice Policy Institute on sentencing laws. In the continuum of policies around sentencing, it felt like drug policy was more on the front end- at the crux of sentencing problems.

I knew I wanted to organize. But coming out of college it was difficult to get in the organizing loop because campus organizing is so different from community organizing. So I hooked into the program called Justice Corps, which led me to Wisconsin.

Q: If you could change any aspect of drug policy, what would be your top priority?

Well after being in a lot of meetings about Blakely [the recent Supreme Court decision, Blakely v. Washington], my head is in Mandatory Minimums right now. But here’s the problem. In terms of presenting viable recommendations- we don’t want judges to have full discretion, but we don’t want juries to have full discretion either, but we also don’t like how Congress is doing things. I think the draconian laws- like the New York Rockefeller Drug Laws- should be abolished and replaced by serious guidelines that carry some discretion but aren’t open to total interpretation and discriminatory implementation.

Of all the one-on-one’s I’ve had with family members and people, and they say, “I did X, and now I’m in for 25 years… “ Especially those one-on-one conversations really hit home in terms of how Mandatory Minimums- ‘cause we just throw it out there- “Mandatory Minimums” – how Mandatory Minimums equals lives. Twenty-five years of someone’s life- for what is possibly a youthful mistake. I think that is an incredible cornerstone of our criminal justice system that has to be rigorously torn apart and re-evaluated and re-visited. Hopefully with the Blakely decision, that kind of reconsideration of what Mandatory Minimums have done to communities will happen.

But I am also cognizant of the fact that some policymakers are moving right now to get a quick fix for Mandatory Minimums, which means people, policymakers, are still not connecting Mandatory Minimums to actual lifetimes. They just want to move a few commas around. The quick fix for this is not going to work. But the fact that people are considering that means that we still haven’t brought how devastating Mandatory Minimums are to the people who need to know.

I think people still believe that if you go to prison, you belong there. And whatever happens there and afterwards- you deserve.