On Monday, during an interview with the Des Moines Register, 2020 presidential hopeful mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg said drug possession should not result in jail time.
Buttigieg said, “Incarceration should not even be a response to drug possession. What I have seen is while there continues to be all kinds of harms associated with drug possession and use, it is also the case that we have created in an effort to deal with a public health problem, we have created an even bigger problem — a justice problem, and it’s own form of a health problem when you think about the adverse aspects on a child. We have kids in South Bend who have grown up with the incarnation of a parent as one of their first experiences. That makes them dramatically more likely to wind up themselves having an encounter with the criminal legal system. So I’ve always been skeptical of mass incarceration, but now I believe more than ever we need to take really significant steps like ending incarceration as a response to simple possession.”
An editor asked, “On that is that across the board? So if its meth or coke or ecstasy, any drug if it’s possession incarceration isn’t—”
Buttigieg said, “That’s right.”
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