Student advocates for legalization of marijuana

Dear State Representative Norine Hammond, 

      rephammond@macomb.com

My name is [I removed the student's name] and I have lived in your district all my life. I was raised in Beardstown, Illinois but moved to Bath, Illinois three years ago. I have never written to you before, but I have come to know your politics through, [name redacted], a close family friend.  On March 1, 2018 the Illinois Senate passed the State Bill 2275, also called the Marijuana Legalization Referendum Act, with a vote of 37-13. The measure now heads to the House of Representatives for consideration. The Marijuana Legalization Referendum Act is a simple question on the next voting ballot, asking voters if they support legalizing recreational marijuana for people 21 and over. I would like to discuss some of the pros of legalizing recreational marijuana with you.

The first argument for legalizing recreational marijuana is the possible revenue boost. State and local governments are currently struggling with rising costs and decreased revenue; many are looking for creative ways to help increase income to pay for everything from new parks, road repairs, to funding schools. It is believed that marijuana legalization could be the windfall in the form of new taxes that could be applied to its distribution and sale. For example, in Colorado, analysts suggest that taxing the drug could raise between $5 million and $22 million annually. The job industry is also growing as marijuana is becoming more of an above ground type of industry with respected companies stating to investigate possibilities for growth. This legalization can generate quite a bit of income for marijuana consulting companies whether they are helping with growing or producing a butane free wax which has become popular recently. The possibilities are endless for economic growth.

I also want to discuss the possibility of a more effective criminal justice and law enforcement system. The legalization advocates claim this move will provide police officers more money and time to go after criminals committing other crimes, such as violent cases. Legalization advocates also argue that legalizing recreational marijuana could create wiggle room in the criminal justice system, that would then allow judges and prosecutors to focus more on the violent crimes, thus freeing space in our overly crowed prison systems. There was a study that estimated that nationwide legalization would save the government $8.7 billion annually. 

Spending less money supporting organized crime is also a good argument in favor of legalization. Legalizing recreational marijuana cuts off an important revenue steam for a large amount of illegal drug trade. Legalization advocates claim that by making the substance less profitable for the criminals, it will provide a decrease in the violence associated with the trade. The result could save lives while taking pressure off law enforcers. 

The last point I am going to discuss is the safety controls legalizing recreational marijuana could provide. When a person is buying marijuana off the streets, there is no way for them to know what or if dangerous substances are cut into the drug. Although current legalization efforts do not address safety issues, they do create a framework for safety control systems, which would work to eliminate some of the risks from smoking a substance potentially laced with toxic ingredients and would reduce the risks coming from smoking illegal marijuana. 

In conclusion, I am asking for your support of State Bill 2275. I feel this would be a positive change for the State of Illinois. Thank you for your consideration and for all you do for the betterment of Illinois.

Respectfully Submitted,

[Student in SWK-355 Social Welfare Policy and Services Course]

Reducing the cost of phone calls for Illinois' incarcerated population.

A student reaction paper

Rauner Signs Bill Limiting Prison Phone Call Costs  

Imagine being a parent and being sent to jail.  The only means of communication with your family is by phone.  Each time you pick up that phone the cost is $4.08 for the first 30 minutes.  This fee is paid by you, the prisoner, or the prisoners' family.  Illinois collects $12 million a year in revenue from these calls.  According to the Illinois Campaign for Prison Justice, Illinois collects the largest amount of commissions in the country off of these phone calls.  

The new policy that Rauner signed August 19, 2016, puts caps on what contractor's can charge inmates and their families for phone calls.  Under the new law, the rate cannot go above 7 cents per minute, or .21 cents per half hour.   That's a savings of $3.87.  The article said without regular contact with family members and support while incarcerated, the recidivism rate is much higher.  The projected cost to Illinois taxpayers over the next 5 years is said to be 16.7 billion.    So why wouldn't we do anything in our power to make sure people do not reoffend?  I think this is something we should not even have to think about, the more interaction they have with their families the better.  So not only is this helping the families with their costs, it helps the prisoners with rehabilitation, and hopefully it helps taxpayers with their costs.

Professor responds:

When it comes to laws about how we treat people incarcerated in prisons, there are usually mixed motivations.  The desire to punish is usually a strong motivation, rooted in feelings of lust for revenge, but also rooted in a rational desire to uphold the law and deter others from committing crimes. There is also a motive to remove harmful persons from the general population, to reduce harm for everyone else and protect us.  But, aside from these motivations around punishment, your reaction essay focuses on the other motive, which is to rehabilitate and help incarcerated persons turn their lives around so that when they are released back into the general population, they will not commit crimes again.  There is a similar motivation to help keep prisoners happy and content, so that they will be easy to guard, will not rise up in revolt, and will not cause greater expense through health and behavioral problems associated with miserable conditions.  There is also a humanitarian desire to keep the punishment merely what the law demands (confinement), and not add misery upon the already difficult situation.

The motive to help prisoners turn their lives around has a mix of altruistic and self-interested motives behind it.  It is much less expensive for everyone if fewer people commit crimes and fewer people must stay in prisons, so we want to reduce recidivism.  Also, we want the prisoners to have better lives, and we want their potential victims (if they are not rehabilitated) to avoid the suffering they would experience if the prisoners were not rehabilitated and committed crimes again.

In your essay, you are focusing on how making phone calls more affordable may help the prisoners and may reduce recidivism.  That's good.

A cost of $4.08 for 30 minutes seems high, but not so outrageously high, until you consider how little income a prisoner has, and also consider that at minimum wage, this is about what a worker could earn in 30 minutes.  As I understand the law you have explained, a prisoner could be charged 7¢ per minute for the first three minutes, but then the cost hits the 21¢ per half hour price cap, and the next 27 minutes would be free.   This is far more reasonable.

Send fewer petty criminals to jails

A student wrote this editorial after being inspired by the story on NPR by Laura Sullivan about poor people serving long jail terms for small crimes because they couldn't raise bail. The original story is at NPR. Another part of Laura Sullivan's story is here. The NPR series concluded with this article.

I don't agree with the way that people are sent to prison for every minor misdemeanor. For instance, we read the article about a homeless person who stole a blanket from the store, and was sent to prison because he couldn't pay the $50 bail fee. The thing that people either don't look at or don't care about, is that it costs way more of the taxpayer's money to keep them in prison than the $15 blanket is worth. I understand if it is a major crime like murder, and things that they are tried for right away, but these small crimes aren't even put onto trial for up to a year after they happen. I think it is crazy how much money we pay to keep people in prison. We pay $9 billion each year on funding prisons. Personally, I would much rather pay for a $15 blanket for a homeless person. Maybe there should be $9 billion towards homelessness prevention, and it would probably even cost less than that.

There was also a situation in Lubbock, TX where a guy stole a $150 television set from Wal-Mart while high on meth and was sent to prison for 75 days. For those days, it cost taxpayers $2,850, let alone all the money for the completely full jail cells. Twenty years ago when people were convicted of a crime, they were released until their hearing and they would just come back. Instead, we built a $110 million mega jail. In my opinion, the solution to this problem is doing pretrial release, where they are sent home with an ankle bracelet, drug testing, counseling, or a social worker. This would come out to about $2 per day instead of $9 per day. If this case was made, I think a lot of people would be for it, except for the bond companies. The bond companies make a living off of all the convicted people paying bonds, so they would be opposed to the idea. However, there are a lot more taxpayers out there that could out rule the bond companies.

Student asks for legal benefits and recognition of same-sex marriage.

This is a student-written editorial, and my comments follow it in this purple font face.

According to Dayna K. Shah, there are 1,138 benefits, rights, and protections provided on the basis of marital status in federal law.  Since the United States government doesn’t allow lesbian and gay couples to marry, lesbian and gay couples are excluded from the benefits and advantages provided by these laws.  Recent data shows that at least 1 million children are being raised by same-sex couples in the United States.  These children are being disadvantaged because their parents don’t qualify for the same tax benefits as heterosexual couples.

First of all, eligibility for the earned income tax credit (EITC) is based in part upon the number of “qualifying” children in the taxpayer’s household.  The definition of qualifying child under this provision includes only a child who is the taxpayer’s (a) biological child or descendent; (b) stepchild of the taxpayer; or (c) adopted child.  Certain children of lesbian and gay couples are disadvantaged by this provision. For example, a gay or lesbian couple are jointly raising one partner’s biological child. The taxpayer works full-time and the child’s legal parent stays home to care for the child. The state in which the taxpayer resides does not permit them to adopt through second-parent adoption or to marry the partner and become the child’s step-parent. This working family is therefore ineligible for an adjustment of the EITC, and therefore has decreased the resources to devote to the child’s care.  The EITC covers single parents with children, but since with this couple the biological parent isn’t earning the household income, she can’t get any EITC.

Secondly, heads of household are eligible for an increased standard deduction that, among other things, provides taxpayers with increased funds to care for their dependents.  The “limitations” section of this provision explicitly denies the benefit of head-of-household status to taxpayers supporting non-biological, non-adopted children. Therefore, a gay or lesbian taxpayer who supports his or her partner’s child (and who is ineligible to adopt the child) has fewer post-tax dollars to support the child. This same exclusion also denies help to kin or close family friends who have informally adopted children by caring for them without any specific legal arrangement while the biological parents are absent or incapable. 

Lastly, taxpayers meeting income eligibility requirements are entitled to a child tax credit for qualifying children in their households. This provision limits the child tax credit to children who meet the relationship test set fourth in the earned income tax provisions. As set forth above, this does not include children of a taxpayer’s domestic partner if the children are not related to the taxpayer biologically or through adoption.

All three of these inequities have the effect of penalizing families who choose to have one parent in the work force and the other caring for the children full-time.  In addition, they disadvantage such couples and their children by limiting the choice of which parent will be a full-time caregiver.  Although similarly situated married couples may choose which parent will fulfill that role without consequence, lesbian and gay couples, as well as other unmarried couples, face negative tax consequences for the same decision.

My comments:

I’m all for continuing to restrict benefits to parents who are in some way officially “married” (in the sense that they have a legal commitment to each other).  The public have an interest in encouraging couples to enter into legal agreements of mutual support, as this reduces their dependence on public support and replaces public obligations with private mutual care.  But this editorial makes a good case that same-sex couples deserve the same incentives to establish long-term legal relationships, or at least receive the same benefits that different-sex couples enjoy. I notice that opposition to the "gay lifestyle" is usually mixed in with perceptions that persons in homosexual relationships tend to have more  difficulty sustaining long-term committed relationships. Until same-sex couples are allowed to aspire to marriage and try marriage, it's difficult to know if this perception has any basis in fact.  Even such heterosexual biases against homosexual couples have any grounding in statistical facts, this would still be a weak reason for denying people the same benefits and legal protections that heterosexual couples enjoy. Equal protection under the law and no establishment of a state religion, you know.

CHIP

In class this past week we discussed social welfare policies that had been in the news recently. We got into a long discussion about parenting, fertility treatments, autonomy, rights to bear children, people who are unfit to be parents, and so forth. I thought the conversation went well.

We didn't talk much about the recent passage of the CHIP law, which was signed the same day as our third class session.

Read about the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act at the White House blog.
If you wanna read the actual text of the law (PL 111-3), it's available here. And by the way, it's the third law passed by the 111th Congress. The second law (the Lilly Ledbetter Act) was an amendment to various civil rights laws to clarify that unlawful discrimination continues so long as discriminatory payment is made up until the time the court finds discrimination exists. This has the practical implication that you can sue someone for violating your civil rights related to unequal pay even if the unequal payments took place a long time before you discovered it, or if you have already stopped working at the workplace that was discriminating against you in your compensation. The first law of the 111th Congress was a boring financing act involving the Department of the Interior.

If you're interested in the CHIP program, here are some links to follow to learn more:

1. National Conference of State Legislatures describes the SCHIP.
2. The progressive (liberal) non-partisan Drum Major Institute describes SCHIP and explains the law at their middle class website.
3. The very neutral and authentically non-partisan Project Vote Smart also offers some good analysis of the law.
4. The low end of the strongest opposition to this S-CHIP program and the new law can be found at Michelle Malkin's blog (I shudder).
5. For a more moderately toned opposition to this policy you'll find what you seek at the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
6. For an example of what Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said about the program, and a little of his testimony about an amendment he tried to have added to the bill, check out the Congressional Record for January 28, 2009.
7. As usual, the best reporting on this policy is from the Christian Science Monitor.