The shame of American justice: Patricia Spottedcrow

I've recently come across a case that actually shocked me to my core. A 25 year old mother of four has been sentenced to TEN years in prison for selling 31 dollars worth of weed. Apparently the (numbskull) judge who handed out this ludicrous sentence thought it was lenient!

There are a couple of points to be made here: Firstly, Patricia Spottedcrow had no previous convictions. Secondly she was the primary carer of four children under the age of nine (the youngest is only 12 months old). Thirdly it was a sting operation, she sold the drugs to an undercover cop. Fourth, this is the USA, although anyone reading this had probably realised that already!

So what has the idiot judge achieved:

1. Leaving four children without a mother, the children now have a 20-30% of going to prison later in life and likely to be far less successful in terms of education and employment than if their mother was on the outside. Psychologically it is much harder for children to grow up without a mother.

2. A huge cost to the tax payer, Oklahoma residents will pay for the food, board and lodge of this woman along with the help that will need to be provided to her children.

3. She will now be far less likely to be able to get a job in future and therefore is more likely to commit a further crime, making Oklahoma's streets more dangerous than less dangerous.

4. The judge has robbed a human of ten years of her life for committing what can in reality be only called a minor crime - no one was hurt, the person buying the weed was doing it as part of their free will and the quantity was tiny.

The point I am trying to make is that sentencing cannot just be about punishment, we cannot take the social consequences out of this type of decision. Of course having children shouldn't mean you should get away with murder but this type of punishment has no benefits to society - so why bother?

I think cannabis should be legalised, I accept the health implications, but taxing and educating people about a drug is much more effective than banning (see alcohol in the prohibition era - as that was obviously a resounding success!) but even the staunchest defender of criminalization of drugs cannot really agree with this sentence.

I hope people in the USA will write to the Governor of Oklahoma to ask for him to pardon Miss Spottedcrow, but I wouldn't hold my breath, America doesn't have a great record of correcting injustice.