Don't hate on Prop 5. You and your family have struggled with addiction, and you should know better. You've become famous actors, so it's not real likely that y'all will be locked up for your alcohol/drug problems. Which is great, don't get me wrong: I don't think nonviolent drug law offenders, such as yourselves and millions of other Americans, should ever be incarcerated for what you (for whatever reasons) choose to put in your bodies.
In California alone, there are 170,000 folks locked up in prisons built for 100,000. That's not rehabilitation. That's seriously messed up. And it costs my friends in California $10 billion each year to maintain. That's messed up, too.
Prop 5 would divert funding from this failed effort to address society's drug problems to programs - especially new ones for youth, which have never before been available - more focused on rehabilitation and treatment for substance abuse.
By all means, let's talk about whether drug treatment instead of incarceration is a good idea - there are those who rightfully argue, I think, that mandatory treatment is a continuation of the same racist, invasive drug war policies that are locking people up. That's an interesting, worthwhile discussion. But don't try to say that prison is better or more effective than treatment. That's crazy talk.
You're right on - or close enough - for so many other issues: dismantling nuclear weapons, closing the School of the Americas, ending the war and occupation of Iraq, eliminating the death penalty, protecting farmworkers rights and immigrants' rights, aiding Darfur, fighting for the environment ... and over the past seven and a half years, I have longed for a
Bartlet administration like you would not believe.
But seriously? You've been talking about rehabilitation needing accountability, and equating that to locking folks up, as the co-chair of the No on Prop 5 Campaign. Seriously? Have you ever been locked up for more than a night or two? I was in jail for six months - admittedly a short stint - in a prison holding just over 1,000 women but built for somewhere around 700. Not as crowded as what ya'll have got going on in California, but still, no way women were getting any kind of meaningful support. That's never been what prison is about anyway.
More than 70 percent of those folks in California's severely overcrowded prisons will return. That's neither the 'accountability' you seek nor rehabilitation.
Proposition 5 precursor Proposition 36, which you also opposed back in the day, has been proven a success. Do some research, Mr. Sheen, and rethink this. You're going to lose on November 4, and I'm gonna be sad that Jed Bartlet wasn't with us on this one.
Posted by Vera Leone