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Forcible medication and coercive treatment | Jan 09, 2005 12:08

United Future MP Marc Alexander appears to have outed his draft law and order policy to the Herald as a way of applying leverage to his United Future party colleagues, who will be asked to approve it at the end of this month. Like most of the "new" ideas touted by centre-right parties in recent years, it is essentially lifted from American jurisdictions where its elements are familiar enough to raise serious concerns as the prospect of their ever being a reality here.

I don't have time to go through all its points, but let's start with the headline-grabber:

Voluntary chemical castration for sex offenders as a pre-condition of parole.

Chemical castration involves the use of anti-androgen drugs, such as MPA, or the contraceptive Depo-Provera (which is prescribed to pre-operative transsexuals as part of the sex-change process), with the aim of lowering the subject's testosterone production and, hence, sex drive and sexual fantasies.

It is mandated for recidivist offenders in some American states, but is controversial, not least because the practice is associated with the early 20th century eugenics movement, which held that forced sterilisation of unhealthy elements would produce a better society.

It is some small mercy that Alexander suggests it would only be an option where it was considered "beneficial", because there is no evidence that chemical castration works for the majority of sex offenders.

Although the drugs in question have never actually been approved by the US FDA for such a purpose, the condition for which it may work is paraphilia, characterised as "a pattern of sexual arousal, erection, and ejaculation that is accompanied by a distinctive fantasy or its achievement."

For other classes of sex offender, including those who deny the offence or are motivated by violence, it will not work at all and may even make things worse by further alienating or disturbing the offender. To legislate in such circumstances for forced medication with a drug that can have serious long-term health effects is adventurous, to say the least. (It's also a little ironic to think of the good Christians in United Future promoting sex-change drugs.)

But here's the thing: it appears that to be effective, chemical castration must be part of a long-term programme of voluntary therapy (and that's "voluntary" in the dictionary sense, and not the curious sense in which Alexander uses it). To conceive it as it a short-term get-out-of jail option is not just irresponsible, it's idiotic.

The Florida State University Law Review has a very useful paper on the issue, and Salon had a story in 2000.

Before we depart this topic, it's worth noting that New Zealand's record in reducing sexual offending by more conventional means is actually very good. Our rate of sexual offending is lower than most comparable jurisdictions (the rate of forcible rape is half that in the US) and, at the same time as the likelihood of reporting has considerably increased, reported offences have fallen steadily. No Right Turn pointed out that five years ago, sexual offending was 25% higher than it is now.

Making drug dealers accomplices to crimes committed by people they supply with drugs.

Defence lawyers are gonna love this one. It's already standard practice to try and shift responsibility away from defendants for their actions ("It was the drugs what done it, sir") and now we have a proposal for a whole new class of blame-shifting.

But what kind of offences qualify? Can I get my drug dealer to chip in on my overdue parking tickets? If I bought drugs in May and did crime in June, does that count? I'm being facetious, but only a little. This is a minefield.

Oddly enough, the proposal would not cover the drug linked to far more crime than any other: alcohol. Host responsibility laws already make licensed purveyors of alcohol responsible to some degree if they serve drunks who later drive or assault someone, but this is more like nailing your local Liquorland for selling you a six-pack the day before you shoplifted. It doesn't make sense.

Specialist drug courts, empowered to offer those arrested for drug possession or trafficking the option of treatment or prison. Relapse of drug use would trigger a mandatory prison term.

Drug courts - which almost always divert defendants into treatment programmes which can involve months of constant counselling and urine-testing - have been highly touted in the US in recent years, and statistics, indeed, show a lower recidivism rate for the 10% or so of drug offenders who carry it out than for those dealt with conventionally.

But there are some substantial caveats to those numbers. Those who are diverted to drug courts do so by choice, making them more likely candidates for going straight in the first place. The courts tend disproportionately to work with white and middle-class "substance abusers". Again, less likely recidivists. (Also, most of the drug courts in America also seem to integrate alcohol abuse into their programmes, which Alexander is not apparently suggesting.)

In the US, most offenders choose drug courts to avoid harsh sentences for non-violent drug offences (which, in US states which adopted "tough on crime" measures in the 1990s, can easily and frequently exceed those for serious offences of violence); without harshly punitive sentencing, the drug court option may not work at all. United Future MPs may well favour such sentencing for minor drug offences (Alexander seems happy to say "possession" and "prison sentence" in the same breath), but the rest of us should be wary of the terrible economic and social cost such policies have wrought in the US.

Apart from costing billions of dollars and blighting the lives of millions of Americans, the war on drugs has been ineffective: the rate of drug use in America seems clearly to be driven by demographic and social factors, rather than the law. Marijuana use, for example, peaked in 1979, with the baby boomers. By the time harsh federal laws were drafted seven years later, it had already fallen by 40%. And then, in the mid-1990s, with the hip-hop generation - and in the face of strict laws and mandatory minimum sentences - it shot up again: teenage marijuana use nearly doubled in a few years.

In a punitive environment, "treatment" sounds kinder - and perhaps more morally satisfying - than incarceration. And I think that there could be a role for some kind of court-monitored treatment process here in the case of P addiction, where it is closely associated with crime committed.

But what. exactly, are you "treating" in the average minor drug offence? What is really wrong with the student who gets caught with a joint, or the office girl who gets an E for the Big Day Out (and as we see above, those are the kinds of people who are offered, and opt for, treatment) that warrants an intrusive and coercive programme that lasts months and involves constant urine testing? Rebelliousness? Non-conformism? A desire to stay up past bedtime?

Such a proposal is not only a waste of resources, it takes you, philosophically, to some quite scary places. This essay on the issue doesn't hold back:

If there are now a million or more coerced into ineffective and often dehumanising 'treatment' yearly in the U.S., what will the figure be when the new paradigm takes hold nation-wide? Are we to assume that casual users and small-time 'dealers' of marijuana who now make up the great majority of drug-law arrestees will be forced into months or years of quasi-religious 12-step programs, demanding of them admissions of powerlessness over their 'addictions', and pledges to a 'higher power' for eternal abstinence from using a substance less addictive than chocolate or coffee and far less harmful than cigarettes? Millions smoke cannabis because it is enjoyable, or medically, socially or artistically useful to them, and imprisoning such 'criminals' is very close to being seen by world opinion as a gross error and injustice, if not crime against humanity. Calling such people 'addicts' and shunting them into 12-step programs may yet be even more sinister, for such 'medicalisation' of the 'problem' will surely be a setback, allowing the drug inquisitors to appear to have the best interests of society at heart, yet continue with their inquisition unimpeded.

Then there's Colorado Judge Morris B. Hoffman, in a law review article:

By existing simply to appease two so diametric and irreconcilable sets of principles, drug courts are fundamentally unprincipled. By simultaneously treating drug use as a crime and as a disease, without coming to grips with the inherent contradictions of those two approaches, drug courts are not satisfying either the legitimate and compassionate interests of the treatment community or the legitimate and rational interests of the law enforcement community. They are, instead, simply enabling our continued national schizophrenia about drugs.

Or former police chief Joseph D. McNamara, writing in the Psychiatric Times in 2000:

The sheer irrationality of continuing to expand a policy doomed to failure begs an explanation. A Jihad comes to mind - a holy war that must be fought regardless of the resulting human horrors. Thus, some scholars who can no longer ignore the inevitable failure of past practices now proclaim a new solution, which the government is eagerly embracing. The phrase 'coerced abstinence' is the practice of continuously drug-testing convicted criminals (and eventually, in all probability, many others) through special drug courts, to detect the presence of illegal drugs in their bodies. Judges, traditionally functioning as impartial legal experts during trials to guarantee due process of law, will now become shamans taking on the responsibilities of judging who is falling under evil spells. We will have legions of real-life television "Judge Judys" routinely denouncing and incarcerating people not on the basis of what they did, but because certain chemicals are present in their urine.

For Marc Alexander, this does not seem to be a bad thing. How else would you explain this?

Abolishing current drug classifications to remove the distinction between hard and soft drugs.

Drugs are bad, mmmkay? All drugs. They're all the same. Marijuana is the same as heroin. Really. Except alcohol. That's different. And pokies. They're good.

Probable unintended consequence: to erase the distinction (and hence, relative risk) between "soft" and "hard" drugs for dealers and probably users too. This is the silliest proposal on the entire slate, and I actually can't think of a reason that a supposed law-and-order party would do this.

The rest of Alexander's draft policy is the familiar bidding-up law and order stuff touted by Act and National - including the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility to 12 - most of it implying a substantial increase in prison capacity, and all of it lifted from the heavily marketed American "tough on crime" model (which, according to a landmark American Bar Association report is itself in crisis). Notably absent is any mention at all of the only category of offending to have consistently increased over the past decade: white-collar crime.

If it adopts Alexander's policy, United Future seems likely to distinguish itself as the party of forcible medication and coercive treatment. Perhaps they like that sort of thing.

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Our round | Jan 07, 2005 11:17

If you don't have the fattest wallet in the bar, it's a good idea to get your round in early. Which would appear to be New Zealand's strategy in the dizzying arena of tsunami aid commitments. Our $10 million in matched contributions so far is dwarfed by the $1 billion Australia yesterday promised, but at least the colour of our money is apparent.

As news stories yesterday demonstrated, it's one thing to promise aid, another to actually deliver it. What happened in the wake of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago - $US1 billion pledged in the heat of the moment, only $17 million actually coughed up a year later - is not an isolated phenomenon.

This is not to suggest that Australia's billion-dollar, five-year promise to Indonesia will not be honoured. On the contrary, the leaders of the two countries appear to have recognised that the disaster offers a unique chance to reboot the relationship between the neighbouring nations. It is unilateral aid (as the SMH points out today, Australia has rejected even the US strategy of debt relief), not delivered via the United Nations, but, as Howard says, that is simply the practical thing to do.

The same can't, unfortunately, be said about the Americans' "core group" of nations to lead the aid effort, which has been wound up after a whole week, its operations handed over to the broader UN effort. (According to Reuters, "diplomats have suggested there was concern that if the huge relief effort breaks down, the United States would prefer not to be in the lead role where it might get the lion's share of blame.") No sign of a Power Line/NZ Pundit spin on it yet, but I'll keep watching …

PA reader Frank Dean had a further observation on the aid politics discussed earlier in the week:

I have just read the on the BBC site that Mr Powell arrived in Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic country, with a message to Muslims worldwide:

Muslims, along with the rest of the world, had "an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action", he said in Jakarta.

"And I hope as a result of our efforts, as a result of our helicopter pilots being seen by the citizens of Indonesia helping them, that value system of ours will be reinforced."

The US secretary of state added that US relief work should also "dry up pools of dissatisfaction which might give rise to terrorist activity".

Powell in my view is the best of the bunch in the current US Admin but why oh why do they have to go into this sort of rhetoric? It just cheapens even further their effort in giving aid. I mean, "American values"!!!! Are the rest of us too lowly to have these values?

Oh, and of course they have to continually link back to the "War on Terror", the administration reason for existence or so we are to believe. But honestly, can't they just keep it simple, take off the Stetson, get off the bleeding white steed and speak as human beings and global citizens with compassion e.g.: "This is one hell-of-a disaster and we just wanna do what we can to help."

And the US Navy in particular has been profoundly helpful in the tsuanmi zone, although the airmen who declared the aid effort more satisfying than "destroying things" in Iraq will probably already have been rapped for going off-message.

Not for the first time, American military professionals seem able to demonstrate a purpose and grace that eludes their political leaders - and certainly their cheerleaders in the blogosphere, who presently sit around waiting to take exaggerated offence at any perceived slight to America. Check out the hair-trigger Francophobia in the comments on this blog linked to by Instapundit.

The Guardian's story about the visit by Powell and Jeb Bush to Phuket is quite funny.

NBR's Francis Till has noticed the rabid anti-UN blog Diplomad too, apparently causing considerable excitement amongst its fans. Without wishing to rain on anyone's parade, it must be noted that the sole source for almost the whole Diplomad-driven story is, er, Diplomad.

Meanwhile, New Zealander Ben Lewis Evans, whose brother was injured when the tsunami struck Phuket (he is now safely home) notes that he and his friend were visited in hospital in Thailand by creepy god-botherers bearing the news that the disaster was in fact God's retribution. "This," he observes, "is just crazy."

Reported this week: 700 bodies unearthed from the rubble, 550 of them those of women and children. Two babies starved to death in their homes after their parents were killed. Satellite images reveal comprehensive destruction. Indonesia? Sri Lanka? No. Fallujah.

As doubts, understandably, increase that Iraq's election this month can be held as scheduled, Riverbend has some interesting observations on the election run-up, including "the fact that, technically, we don't know the candidates. We know the principal heads of the lists but we don't know who exactly will be running. It really is confusing. They aren't making the lists public because they are afraid the candidates will be assassinated."

On the other hand, and doubtless for their own reasons, the governments of both Iran and Syria have strongly encouraged Iraqis to participate in the elections.

A fascinating new essay by James Dobbins in Foreign Affairs magazine urges a regional solution for Iraq - meaning co-operation with Iran, much like that quietly undertaken as part of the reconstruction of Afghanistan:

Engaging Iran will present the greatest difficulties for the United States, given Tehran's nuclear aspirations, its support for terrorism against Israel, and several decades of mutual hostility and noncommunication. But Iraq cannot be stabilized without Iranian cooperation. Conversely, if Iraq is not stabilized, there can be no prospect of dimming Tehran's nuclear ambitions, however much its actual capabilities might otherwise be delayed by military or economic action.

On the other hand, there is the view quoted here:

"Until now, the best efforts of the United States and the emerging Iraqi army have not succeeded in preventing the growth of the insurgency," noted Robert Killebrew, a retired Army colonel and counter-insurgency specialist, who believes that even if the elections come off, Washington may well soon face the greater danger of a region-wide insurgency.

Killebrew, whose theories will be featured next week at a forum at the influential neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), argues that the only way to redress the situation is to increase Washington's, as well as the Iraqi government's, troop strength, close the borders with Iran and Syria, and threaten Iraq's neighbors with retaliation if they provide support or safe haven to the insurgency. He also favors substantially expanding the U.S. military as a signal of "national will."

Yikes.

The US Congress is expected to face a request for $100 billion to support the war in Iraq this year. It won't be accounted in the annual federal budget, but as a "supplemental request" after the budget is filed. Huh? You mean they don't know there's a war on?

So, how are things going in Iraq, anyway? There's Chrenkoff's frantically optimistic Good News From Iraq, an article of faith amongst panicky conservatives, and the more measured Iraq Index from the Brookings Institute, and there's the bad news.

Unfortunately, President Bush appears to want Iraq news in only one flavour, according to the generally-accurate Beltway newsletter the Nelson Report:

There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear "bad news."

Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. "That's all he wants to hear about," we have been told. So "in" are the latest totals on school openings, and "out" are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that "it will just get worse."

Our sources are firm in that they conclude this "good news only" directive comes from Bush himself; that is, it is not a trap or cocoon thrown around the President by National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Cheney, and DOD Secretary Rumsfeld. In any event, whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message.

Gordon Dryden notes a statement, published as a full-page ad in The Economist, signed by more than two dozen American intellectuals, calling for a radical change in US policy in the Middle East. "Most pertinent," Gordon notes, "many of the signatories would be regarded as conservatives, including Samuel Huntington, of Harvard, and Christopher Layne, contributing editor of The American Conservative."

On the same site (and just to show that not everyone at the Cato Institute is as stupid as Louis Rosetto), Christopher Preble and Justin Logan have an excellent essay noting "the pervasive fear among neoconservatives in Washington of the resurgence of realism."

So, that'll do. I hadn't planned to blog so seriously through the holidays. Indeed, I had planned to author a loving description of making a gorgeous raspberry jus to accompany Christmas Day's roast turkey breast. It was my first jus, and I was going to call the post 'Season of the Jus'. Never mind.

I'm away for a break on Waiheke island next week, when, we are promised, the sun will finally come and stay, so there won't be anything on the wires. I'll hopefully post one more thing before then: an analysis of United Future's draft law and order policy, which is, er, interesting …

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The Uncharitables | Jan 04, 2005 11:46

So the US government might gain political advantage through pitching in with an historic aid effort in a part of the world where it has been deeply unpopular? Well and good. If that happens, then the benefits will be widely shared. If the response to the crisis can change the tenor of international relations in the tsunami zone, the calamity will not have been for naught.

Regrettably, it appears that not everyone has responded to the tsunami disaster in a spirit of love and human kindness. The Anglican Dean of Sydney, Phillip Jensen, announced this week that the earthquake and tsunami were the result of God's anger with human immorality. Disasters, apparently, "are part of His warning that judgment is coming." The chief executive of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils satisfied himself with the relatively restrained observation that it could not have happened unless it was God's will.

The Dean has been sharply criticised by a senior Catholic priest, and Australian Jewish and Hindu leaders have said the tsunami cannot be described as the will of God, or punishment from God. Meanwhile, of course, Christian relief agencies such as the Tear Fund and World Vision have been hard at work, and in India, Hindis, Muslims and Christians have united to address the crisis.

The major US conservative Christian groups have, on the other hand, essentially ignored this great human tragedy in favour of Christmas-minded messages about sin, the Supreme Court, the "homosexual lobby" and why you shouldn't see that Kinsey movie. Bill Berkowitz of Working for Change did a sweep of their websites last week and found none even mentioning the tsunami. The only fund-raising going on was for themselves.

I checked them again yesterday, and one site had noticed the tragedy. The Reverend Donald Wildmon's Mississippi-based American Family Association, has a story about good work being done in the tsunami zone by faith-based organisations, but there's no hint of the Rev thinking about urging his flock to lend a hand.

Of course, for really deranged religious bigotry, you can't go past Pastor Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church, whose organisation (also known as God Hates Fags) followed up its joyful Thank God for Tsunami. Thank God for 3,000 dead Americans! with Thank God for the tsunamis - and for 5,000 dead Swedes!!! They also have a handy tsunami FAQ.

Meanwhile, you almost have to admire the Ayn Rand Institute for sticking to its (literally) uncharitable ideological scripture in declaring U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims …

But what I am really tiring of is the weirdly self-obsessed angle on the aid effort epitomised in such parts of the conservative blogosphere as the currently-hip Power Line, which fired off Tsunami Relief: The Real Story and then Help Arrives ("And it ain't coming from the U.N."), the gist of which was that it was not the corrupt, lying and lazy United Nations that was saving lives in Aceh, but the US military. (The ever-loyal NZ Pundit has been keenly running the evil and feckless UN line too.)

It's quite true that the arrival off Aceh on Saturday of the carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln - and its helicopters - was, in the words of the UN's man in Indonesia, "absolutely life saving". The US copters reached places no one had been able to get to and eased the UN's congestion problems at Banda Aceh airport. There have also been Australian, Singaporean, New Zealand and Indonesian aircraft (our government has spent $300,000 hiring a helicopter, which will help fill in for the RNZAF Hercules that broke) bringing supplies into Banda Aceh, US cargo planes taking tons of rice, noodles and high-energy biscuits from the UN World Food Programme into the same areas, and non-governmental aid agencies all over the place. A French helicopter carrier was en route on Sunday. Quite why this all should be occasion for this sort of creepy politicking by Power Line and its chums is unclear.

The angry right's squalling about an alleged catastrophic failure by the UN appears to be based (surprise!) on ideology, rather than anything I've actually been able to read in the news. There have been problems delivering aid in some areas, but to blame the UN (which, to take one example, has delivered 280 tonnes of food to the affected coastal areas of Somalia) for what seems to come down to a lack of helicopters doesn't make sense.

Presumably, NZ Pundit and the lawyer-drones at Power Line were reading off the same sheet of talking points as the vile David Frum, the former Bush speech writer who invented the phrase "Axis of Evil", and who could be found at the weekend in the Daily Telegraph decrying the UN's "terrible, terrible records in dealing with people in need."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune's lacerating editorial last week on the Bush administration's performance on international aid (two days before Christmas it announced it would not honour its commitments on contributions to world food programmes) is worth reading for a reality check on that score.

Ditto as regards the mightiest development pledge yet made by the Bush administration - the 2002 Millennium Challenge account, which, it was promised, would provide $5 billion annually in aid to African countries - has not so far disbursed a single dollar, and will never actually be funded to anything like the level promised when Bush announced it. People in glass houses …

The Christian Science Monitor had a sensible story on the relief effort, as did The Independent.

Elsewhere, a Rush Limbaugh listener wanted to know "where all the foreign aid from other countries for America was during the Florida hurricanes", provoking an indignant liberal response from RelentlesslyOptimistic blog: "So lighten up, try to hate less and care more, like Jesus said."

PS: Wikipedia rounds up the online donation links for many countries. You can donate to tsunami appeal funds the New Zealand branch of the Red Cross here and Oxfam New Zealand here.

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