In a photo display, the public sees real faces of the people filling the prisons today and learns the stories of selected inmates whose sentences illustrate the often harsh and arbitrary polices imposed on first-time, non-violent drug offenders.
Through these case histories, along with charts and statistical data, we evaluate the social and financial costs to America, including the price tag of incarceration and the current priority of "trading books for bars."
Furthermore, excerpts ofrom the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Bill or Fights demonstarte that America is viiolationg many basic human rights of its own citizens in the name of the Drug War.
Most improtantly, the exhibit puts a human face on a war that is otherwise almost always depicted as a faceless war. It also gives voice to the prisoners of the Drug War through their own art, poetry, and personal writings. A memorial honers the victims like Donald Scott and Gary Shepherd, killed by law enforcement agencies.
Human Rights '95 encourages a wide variety of civic groups and individuals to participate. The coalition was initiated by the Family Council on Drug Awarness, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, and Forfeiture Endangers American Rights.
Federal mandatory minimum sentences put first-time nonviolent drug offenders in prison for five, 10, 20 years or even life -- often for longer terms than those convicted of murder, rape or robbery.
Medical patient James Cox is serving 15 years in a Missouri prison for cultivating marijuana. He used the herb to help cope with the pain and loss of appetite due to repeated surgeries for cancer and radition poisoning. Deprived of medical cannabis, lacking effective remedies and suffering medical neglect, James' wife Pat wonders if he will get out of prison alive.
Article 12 states, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation."
In recent years, people in th eU.S. have suffered incresing invasions of their privacy, including phone taps, intrusive urine testing, infra-red scanning of homes, garbage and mail searches, computer searches of bank records and utility bills and racially discriminatory profile searches. Congress is steadlily stripping away our Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Article 17:2 states, "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property."
Under civil asset forfeiture laws, police agencies con keep some of the property they confiscate. Forfeiture victims do not have to be charged with a crime to lose their homes, cars or life savings. Often they are deprived of their right to trial. Although the Us Supreme Court held in 1993 that disproportionate forfeitures are unconstitutional, the abuses continue.
The military analogy opens the door for a truce to negotiate a policy that recognizes the dignity of the individual, respects the human rightts of all peoples, and protects the legitimate interests and concerns of society as a whole.
We call on the United Nations, the American people and the U.S. goovernment to bring and end to the human rights violation\s of the Drug War.
Our government now locs up over a million people at the federal, state, and local levels. The federal prison population alone is over 100,000 people and projected to swell to 130,000 by the and of the decade. Only 13% of federal inmates are violent criminals. Over 60% are drug offenders.
Since mandatory minimums were enacted, the number of women inmates has tripled. The majority of them are first time, nonviolent, low-level drug offenders. Over 80% of the female prisoners in the United States are mothers; 70% are single parents. Their childen are left to fend for themselves, whether among relatives, in foster homes or on the streets.
Meanwhile, an African-American male is more than seven times as likely to be incarcerated as the average American; almost five times as likely as his South African counterpart.
More and more Americans have begun to ask how many lives will be destroyed by U.S. drug policy that wages war against its own people.
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