Charleston City Council members have given the green light to a citizen-initiated municipal measure to reduce local penalties for certain violations related to marijuana possession.
Bill 8039 eliminates fines and jail time for first-time possession of small amounts of marijuana. Under current state law, possession of marijuana is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Corey Zinn, community organizer for the group Charleston Can’t Wait, said the move is a positive step forward for the city.
“We guarantee that you will not have to pay a fine or serve a jail sentence unless you have a previous drug conviction and are arrested with 15 grams or less,” Zinn explained.
Under Section 89 of the city constitution, Charleston residents with enough signatures can put measures on the ballot through petitions, ordinances or amendments. More than 4,000 residents have signed the petition to reduce penalties for marijuana possession.
Zinn added that it was encouraging to hear city officials recognize the harm to the community associated with the criminalization of marijuana. According to data from West Virginia University, more than 1,600 residents were arrested for marijuana possession or sale in 2021.
“It was a very moving feeling to listen to these conversations and talk about racial differences,” Zinn noted.
Zinn believes the city’s ability to change drug policy is severely limited because of West Virginia’s harsh penalties for drug possession.
“There’s still a message that this is a crime, that you shouldn’t do this, and I think a lot of people would agree that’s not really the case,” Zinn stressed. “Unless another crime is being committed, there shouldn’t be a problem here.”
An overwhelming majority of U.S. adults (88%) said marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use, according to a poll released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center.
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Police departments across the U.S. have struggled with officer shortages in recent years, but a new report shows how youth training programs can counteract the trend.
Many armed forces offer programs that provide practical training in addition to classroom instruction.
Benjamin Klosky, a former Urban Institute researcher and Fairfax County police cadet, said his interest was sparked because he didn’t want to go to college or join the military after graduating high school, but still needed to earn money.
“If you ask a police officer what they do, they’ll tell you they do everything from marriage counselor to social worker to teacher to referee,” Klosky explained. “You have to play many different roles, and not all of those roles are learned in the narrow confines of the police academy.”
Klosky still had to undergo a vetting process that included a polygraph test and a background check. And he was able to do productive police work, such as assisting with search warrants, processing evidence and performing maintenance, as well as shadowing patrols. He acknowledged that apprenticeships are costly for departments, but they can bring benefits such as higher retention, cost savings compared to academies and recruiting a more diverse workforce.
For example, many of Klosky’s fellow cadets spoke multiple languages and came from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
“The other cadets were not people who would otherwise have gone to college and become police officers,” Klosky noted. “These are people from the communities where police officers work, who wanted to become police officers and had no other way to do it.”
Recruiting and retaining officers has been difficult since 2020 due to growing public distrust of police and concerns about officers using excessive force. But that trend may be reversing for the first time since the pandemic, according to the Police Executive Research Forum.
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According to the Sentencing Project’s latest report, West Virginia has made significant criminal justice reforms to reduce harsh sentences for children, but that doesn’t help those who were convicted before the reforms went into effect.
According to the report, more than 8,600 people are in prison for crimes they committed as children and are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Ashley Nellis, co-research director of the Sentencing Project, said West Virginia set an example for other states when it reformed its juvenile justice laws in 2016.
“West Virginia has effectively abolished life without parole for juveniles,” Nellis stressed. “And they also don’t report people serving life with parole or quasi-life sentences for crimes they committed when they were under 18.”
The state also continues to see a downward trend in the number of youth in juvenile detention centers. A one-day count of young inmates in 2019 found that there were nearly 500 children under the age of 18 in West Virginia detention centers. Two years later, the number had dropped to 345.
Nellis noted that a growing body of neuroscience research is showing key differences between developing and adult brains related to decision-making, compulsive behavior, and changes in the parts of the brain responsible for “fight or flight.” Most research now suggests that the brain continues to develop until the mid-20s, calling into question the fairness of prosecuting and sentencing juveniles in the adult system.
“You are still biologically a teenager even if you have been transferred into the criminal justice system and released from juvenile detention,” Nellis explained.
Nellis added that states still have leeway in sentencing minors.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has addressed the issue of life without parole for juveniles and has severely limited the permissible application of this punishment to young people,” Nellis stressed. “But it has not dictated to the states how they should implement it.”
Overall, the number of youth arrested has dropped dramatically since the mid-1990s, and the number of youth incarcerated in juvenile detention centers fell from over 108,000 in 2000 to around 27,000 in 2022, a 75% decline. However, youth of color are much more likely to be incarcerated in juvenile detention centers than white youth.
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Two recently enacted laws in Kentucky are expected to increase the number of children incarcerated in the state, according to a new report from the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.
House Bill 3 would require any child accused of a violent crime to be held in custody for up to 48 hours (not including weekends and holidays) pending a hearing before a judge. This could affect a significant number of youths, as Kentucky’s laws regarding violent crimes are much broader than those of most other states.
Kaylee Raymer, an analyst at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, said hundreds more children would likely be detained.
“Not only because incarceration is harmful to young people, no matter how long they are there, but also because Kentucky’s youth correctional facilities are struggling with staffing issues,” Raymer said. “The Department of Justice is currently investigating.”
Raymer noted that the law was passed against a backdrop of widespread staffing shortages in Kentucky’s youth correctional facilities and a class-action lawsuit against the state’s juvenile court. The Louisville detention center, which received more than $17 million in renovations through House Bill 3, is not yet completed, meaning children in Jefferson County are locked away from their families for hours at a time.
Another bill, Senate Bill 20, would require children to be tried as adults in some cases when a weapon is alleged to have been involved in a crime, but not necessarily used.
Raymer stressed that the law would reverse three-year-old reforms that ended the automatic transfer of children to adult court and put decision-making back in the hands of the judge.
“This means that a lot of the judge’s discretion is being taken away,” Raymer claimed. “We’re going to see a lot more cases go to adult court.”
Research shows that sentencing children as adults seriously damages their mental health and does not deter them from reoffending.
According to one study, the prevalence of mental disorders among juveniles transferred to and incarcerated in adult court is almost twice as high as among adults. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, just over 13 out of 1,000 children ages 10 to 19 in Kentucky were placed in a closed juvenile correctional facility in 2022.
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