|
Justice
and
Human
Rights:
Criminal
justice
systems
out
of
control
in
the
US
and
China
8/29/97
A report released this past Monday from the National Center on Institutions
and Alternatives found that half of the young black men in the District
of Columbia are under criminal justice supervision -- prison, jail, probation
or parole -- on any given day. The report analyzed the African American
population between the ages of 15 and 35. The NCIA report also found that
the odds of a given black male in the District having spent time incarcerated
by the age of 35 exceeds 80 percent.
A report released Tuesday by the human rights group Amnesty International
revealed that China sentenced more than 6,100 people to death and executed
at least 4,367 last year in a "tough on crime" crackdown called
"Strike Hard". Many of those executed had been convicted of minor
offenses, such as a man in Sichuan province executed for stealing 14 cows,
or two men for stealing a car which they sold for $1,200. The Amnesty report
charges that agencies were "under pressure to achieve speedy results,"
in one case executing a man for a crime of which he had been accused of
committing six days earlier, and in some cases retrying and executing offenders
previously sentenced to incarceration.
Among the victims were drug offenders, mainly persons convicted of drug
possession. One example was a young woman traveling from her honeymoon
in Kunming to her native Guangdong, who had agreed in exchange for money
to take a package for an acquaintance. The official report states that
she became suspicious while riding the train, and had difficulty opening
it, but in the process attracted the attention of a ticket checker, who
turned her in.
We will provide information on obtaining these two reports in a later
bulletin. Information for this section was obtained from the August 26
issue of the San Francisco Chronicle.
-- END --
|
Issue #9, 8/29/97
International News: US Claims Progress, Fog Lifting in UK Drug Policy, March in Germany, Mexico Blood Bath | Drug War Corruption: Employees at points of entry find that crime pays better than baggage handling | Medical Marijuana: California Attorney General adds a surprising voice to calls for research | Student Drug Testing: An old and nearly forgotten phrase is uttered by a New Jersey judge... Probable cause | Media Alert: The Wall Street Journal hits the nail on the head with regard to the Drug War's destruction of Colombia's society | Justice and Human Rights: Criminal justice systems out of control in the US and China | Link of the Week: Shedding light on the impact of America's overused criminal justice system | Quote of the Week: Drug Czar McCaffrey has figured out one of the problems | Editorial: Needle exchange is still illegal in New Jersey... but that doesn't make it wrong
|
This issue -- main page
This issue -- single-file printer version
Drug War Chronicle -- main page
Chronicle archives
|
PERMISSION to reprint or
redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet is hereby
granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and,
where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your
publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks
payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for
materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we
request notification for our records, including physical copies where
material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network,
P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202)
293-8344 (fax), e-mail [email protected]. Thank
you.
Articles of a purely
educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet
Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
|
