The argument from the police and some of the business community is that the tools to enforce drug and prostitution activity in our city no longer exist. The reality is those tools never existed.
The lapse of the city’s drug- and prostitution-free zones could be a sign that the city of Portland is stepping out of decade’s worth of bad policy that has targeted minorities and poor people through tactics meant more to menace and displace drug users and dealers than to curb their activity.
Some leaders of the Portland Police Bureau are considered to be effective by remaining old school, but old school in the context of drug policy and enforcement in our communities has never been effective. Forcing drug users into our prison system is cruel punishment for antiquated, backward policies that have held millions of our citizens hostage.
While many other developed countries have long looked at drug addiction and prostitution as healthcare issues, our country continues to remain in a punitive posture. That posturing and federal policy trickles down to local communities and enables individual officers and police bureaus to carry out dysfunctional and disingenuous efforts to force the supply and demand of drugs and human beings onto the black market. The results are disastrous for people’s civil rights, health and well being.
Let’s be real. The illegal drug trade is a multibillion dollar industry that cannot be solved with hundreds of thousands of police officers enforcing bad policy. These policies cripple people’s lives, use prison as rehabilitation, and reward no one other than politicians who benefit from “tough on crime” rhetoric and a billion-dollar privatized prison industry.
With regard to prostitution: In a world of human trafficking, pimps, abuse, rape, and unchecked disease there’s no social justice. The sex industry is alive and kicking in our community, but bad policies selectively punish the poor. Oppression is oppression is oppression, and both the drug- and prostitution-free zones represent the tools that help enforce that oppression.
Portland has the chance to break away from other cities in the United States on civil rights issues affecting the poor, and become leaders in how we work with individuals. We live in a political environment that will support tough choices to throw all of our resources into recovery, reform and opportunity. If being tougher on crime is the answer, then we have failed. If holding leaders in our community in high regard for using old school tactics is the alternative, than we have failed.
Street Roots believes that jailing addicts and sex workers is a form of torture for which any smart and innovative civilization would find solutions. We have that opportunity in Portland. We’ve begun down that long road; let’s hope we have the compassion and ingenuity to keep moving forward.
We aren’t a bunch of wide-eyed liberals, or dope-smoking hippies arguing for policies that have been discredited over the years, but instead we are offering a perspective that looks outside the framework that has failed time and time again. We mustn’t follow bad policy with worse. Instead, we must go from harm reduction to reform. If we don’t push beyond the old framework now, it won’t be long before the drug- and prostitution-free zones will be hailed as a progressive tool to deal with the problems facing our community. We shouldn’t let that happen.
