The 2012 documentary The
House I Live In by Eugene Jarecki finally came up in my Netflix queue, and
I watched it, spellbound. Afterward, I thought, had I seen it in 2012, it would
have made the top five of my year’s top 10 films. And not because of its
technical expertise, though it’s fine. No, because it is so important.
Some people hear that and think, I don’t want to be preached
to; I don’t want to feel guilty; I don’t want to have to think about hard
subjects. Your reaction is up to you, but for what it’s worth, this film offers
good insights into a larger reality that may change or enhance your
perspective.
House addresses
the war on drugs. It looks at its beginnings during the Nixon administration,
when drug abuse was not particularly a problem in terms of crime, but it drew
voters. So there you go.(Interestingly, Nixon stipulated that two-thirds of the funds go toward treatment. That's far from the case today.)
The film uses historical footage and many interviews. The
most engaging interviewee, in my mind, is David Simon, creator of The Wire, an outstanding series that
first played on HBO. He is articulate, knowledgeable and passionate. He speaks
not only from his head knowledge but from his experience as a reporter working
with police in Baltimore.
The film also gets personal. Jarecki narrates it and notes
that it began as an exploration of what happened to the son of the
African-American woman, named Nannie, who worked as his parents’ housekeeper and
helped raise him. Partly because of her being gone while working for the
Jareckis, she intimates, she wasn’t around her adult son as much, and he got
into drugs and eventually died of AIDS from a contaminated needle.
The film goes on to explore the judicial system that has
filled our prisons with nonviolent offenders whose crime is often selling
drugs. Because of harsh sentencing requirements established by Congress during
the Reagan and Clinton administrations (and carried on by others), judges are
handicapped in handing out sentences to those found guilty of drug offenses.
Jarecki interviews a judge in Iowa who eventually resigns out of frustration about the harsh mandatory sentences.
He also interviews a prison guard in Oklahoma who loves his
job but comes to see that the judicial system is broken and that most of the
prisoners he oversees should not be there.
Who benefits by putting nonviolent drug offenders in prison
for five to 20 years at a time? Politicians who win votes from a fickle and
ignorant populace. Private prisons who rake in billions of dollars housing
nonviolent prisoners at a huge cost to taxpayers (more than $20,000 per year
per prisoner). Corporations who get all these poor people off the streets.
Simon says at one point, “They might as well say, Let’s get
rid of the bottom 15 percent of the population.” That’s the effect of this
so-called war on drugs. It destroys individual lives; it destroys communities.
It costs all of us.
Simon points out that it also hurts police and fighting
violent crime. He says that when police go out and arrest people for possessing
drugs, they make money. First, they confiscate whatever drugs or money is on
the people they arrest (and get to keep it). They get paid extra for overtime,
since it takes time to do the paper work. And at the end of the month, they can
say they made 60 arrests, which looks impressive to the public and their
superiors. Meanwhile, a detective may work hard on a murder case and make one
arrest in a month. He gets no overtime pay and little credit from his superiors
because he hasn’t brought in money to the department.
In other words, the war on drugs is a moneymaker for those
in power. But for most of us, it’s not. Instead it takes our resources and
invests them in prisons and police rather than in education or health care. It
ties up the courts with cases that need not even come to the courts.
Jarecki interviews offenders and family members. He notes
that for years the war on drugs was a war primarily on young African-American
men, who were filling the prisons and unable to get jobs when they got out,
since they were felons.
Simon points out that when an economy fails a community,
when the people there cannot find jobs that allow them to live, an alternative
economy emerges. This happens all over the world and throughout history. We
should not be surprised. People will try to survive. Fix the economy, create
jobs that provide a living wage, and the drug trade will diminish rapidly.
Since the late 1990s, many more poor whites have entered
prison because of the emergence of meth. Again, the use and sale of this drug
comes out people’s desperate circumstances. Blue collar jobs have been
disappearing, and people can’t find work.
If you watch House,
be sure to check out the extras. In one, called “Jury Nullification,” Simon
points out that juries are not required to go by the judge’s instruction or the
letter of the law. They can rule as they see fit. Simon says that if he’s on a
jury, he will never convict anyone charged with a nonviolent crime.
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