Latest From ACLU of Washington

Questioning Executions: On Crosscut.com: As our state’s first execution in many years approaches, Hubert Locke, dean emeritus of UW’s Evans School of Public Affairs, questions the wisdom of a punishment that cannot be revoked when mistakes are uncovered. Inequality and Prisons: Columnist Jerry Large of the Seattle Times highlights a recent paper by a UW sociologist that explores the negative consequences flowing from our policies of locking up more and more people.

The ACLU works to protect student rights in the courts and in the state legislature. But our most valuable job is educating students and families about rights they may not even realize they have.

Inaugurating our periodic feature of civil liberties items in the media: Spokane’s Spokesman-Review reports on a new study by Gonzaga University on dropout prevention for middle schoolers. Included are many practical alternatives for people concerned about the “school-to-prison pipeline” – i.e., the reliance on “zero tolerance” discipline and other harsh measures that result in students being pushed out of school and ending up in the criminal justice system. An article in The Stranger calls into question the Seattle Police Department’s many arrests of individuals simply for possessing marijuana when this is supposed to be – by the voter-passed Initiative 75 – the city’s lowest law enforcement priority. Included is this nugget from Alison Holcomb, the ACLU-WA’s drug policy director: "Even if police are stumbling across marijuana secondarily, it's still a waste of their time to process the paperwork for the marijuana offense. It's a waste of tax dollars to submit that marijuana for testing."  And finally, a point of pride: Our recent blog post on the Witt Standard in “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” cases is now featured on the national ACLU’s “Blog of Rights,” Daily Kos, and Pam’s House Blend.

Although the number of people being arrested and imprisoned for drug crimes in Washington is decreasing, we still rely far too heavily on the criminal sanction for dealing with drug abuse. Only 140 people were in Washington prisons for drug crimes in 1980, while in 2008 there were over 2,300. And this doesn’t include people locked up in jails; for example, in 2008, the average daily population (ADP) of drug offenders in the King County jail was 459 – 18% of total ADP. Similarly, less than 6,000 people were arrested for drug crimes in 1981, while the figure was over 20,000 in 2009 (down from an all time high of 27,909 in 2007). Even after adjusting for population changes, these increases are staggering.

Last week the Seattle P-I publicized the fact that Seattle's University District needle exchange, privately funded and operated by the People's Harm Reduction Alliance, had added clean crack pipes to its arsenal of disease-prevention weapons.  KING 5 News picked up the story, as did KIRO Radio. Many of the reader comments posted to the stories reflect the expected divide in public opinion about needle exchange programs.  On the one hand are those who understand that certain strategies focused on reducing the societal and personal harms of drug abuse not only "meet addicts where they are" and provide a compassionate link to treatment and recovery, they also save tax dollars that would otherwise be spent on emergency rooms, hospitalization, and uninsured treatment of Hepatitis C, HIV, and AIDS.  On the other are those who think harm reduction strategies simply enable addiction, and addicts would be better served by a dose of "tough love" - or simply left to die from overdose or the diseases they contract. Read more

A Washington State woman was featured in a recent newspaper article that triggered government investigations into pregnancy discrimination in mortgage lending. Federal law prohibits mortgage lenders from discriminating against borrowers based on pregnancy, as long as the borrowers can demonstrate that they intend to return to work and will be able to continue meeting the income requirements for the loan. And, although lenders may ask about borrowers’ incomes to determine loan eligibility, they may not use pregnancy or maternity leave as grounds to deny mortgages. Read more