Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/306555
17 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 4 MAY 2014 week as Galea Debono made his claim, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction issued a report which revealed that Malta is in fact Europe's second highest spender on accommodating drug users in prison, with particular reference to first-time users. This is how it was reported in The Independent: "The EMCDDA estimates that in 2010 Malta spent as much as 0.084 per cent of its gross domestic product – €5,208,000 – on this category of prisoner. Malta was only outspent by Italy, which dedicated 0.087 per cent of its GDP to drug offenders." Even taking differences in size and population into account, "… Malta is nevertheless spending a disproportionate amount on drug offence prisoners, particularly on first-time offenders – an area that the government appears to be intending to address…." The same report adds that 85% of all arrests made for simple possession were of people aged between 15 and 34, and 17% of those were offenders between 30 and 34 years of age. OK, maybe my brain has been addled like that egg in the ad, but I for one cannot make sense of the above contradictory claims. How, exactly, did we manage to spend over €5 million in one year to keep drug users in prison, if according to a leading criminal judge we never sent any to jail in the first place? Not even repeat offenders? The answer is of course because we do send first-time users to prison, and in large numbers too. We have even sent users to prison for possession of drugs that were not actually illegal at the time they were apprehended. I clearly remember a case in which the former Attorney general (now Chief Justice) Silvio Camilleri pursued a prison sentence for possession of Khat, at a time when this substance was not even listed on the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for the pesky Court of Criminal Appeal which overturned the original conviction. This, by the way, might also explain the overcrowding of Malta's only prison, whose population has more than quadrupled over the past 20 years. What else to expect, if we send people to prison for possession of legal drugs, too? So all things considered: no, I am not particularly surprised that Galea Debono would "not understand what all the hullaballoo is about". The entire criminal justice system, from the lowliest police officer to the loftiest judge, doesn't understand either. And they couldn't make this clearer to us if they tried. But I am slightly surprised that a retired judge would fail to understand the broader implications of the sentences he himself has handed down over the years. Yet Galea Debono seems not to understand that even in cases where the offender is not imprisoned, but fined or given a suspended sentence, the offence will still be registered in his or her criminal record, with consequences that will haunt that person for the rest of his her life. Someone who has been convicted of a drug possession offence – note: a suspended sentence still counts as a prison sentence in the eyes of the law. In practice, it just means you don't have to actually serve it in prison – will effectively be branded with an indelible 'mark of Cain'. A criminal record for possession of cannabis will curtail your freedom of movement: it means, among other things, that you cannot get a VISA to go to the United States (weird, I know, given that some US States have now legalised the same drug. But anyway…) And in this age of biometric passports and the instant transfer of information, it could seriously impede your freedom in other ways, too. Certainly it will make it difficult to land a job. And seeing as 85% of these people are between 15 and 34… in some cases, yet to start job-hunting for the time; in others, struggling to maintain a young family, etc… the consequences of a criminal record can be little short of catastrophic, regardless of whether the person ever spent a single day in prison. The truth – and Joe Galea Debono is not the only one who fails to comprehend this – is that our justice system does not reform criminals. It produces them. It does this by unnecessarily criminalising people as young as 15 over offences which are not considered worth pursuing by most modern police forces around the world. In many cases, their 'crime' would have been to be caught smoking a joint… when there is an abundance of medical evidence, freely available to anyone who cares to look, that the drug in question is less harmful to health or society than the alcohol consumed legally by judges and magistrates themselves… sometimes, as we all saw over the last Christmas period, in the comfort of the same courtroom where they will later convict teenagers for consumption of a less harmful substance. And having produced those criminals out of nothing, the same system will then go on to spend more than €5 million in one year trying to 'reform' them in prison. Yet all along it is not the random smokers of joints who need to be 'reformed'… it is a perverse and bizarre criminal justice system that constantly harangues ordinary citizens and portrays them as 'menaces to society'… when we can all see with our own eyes who the real menaces to society are. This is your justice sy stem on drugs Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2007-2013 Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality of Life 3URMHFWSDUW¿QDQFHGE\WKH(XURSHDQ8QLRQ (XURSHDQ6RFLDO)XQG(6) &R¿QDQFLQJUDWH(8)XQGV1DWLRQDO)XQGV Investing in your future Are you looking for a challenging job which gives you personal satisfaction? 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