UK - Revealed: how 10 joints could lead to 14 years for dealing

[Abrad]

Prosecutions to soar under plan to slash limits for drug possession

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Wednesday June 7, 2006
The Guardian

A girl lighting a joint. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty


Drug users caught with as few as five ecstasy tablets or five grams of cannabis - enough for about 10 joints - will be prosecuted as dealers under regulations drawn up by the Home Office, the Guardian has learned. The plan to slash the limit for cannabis possession for personal use would mean that anyone found with more could face a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

The Home Office has written to the government's experts, the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs, telling them that ministers are also minded to set the threshold for possession for heroin and cocaine at two grams.

Although home secretary John Reid has yet to take a final decision, draft regulations seen by the Guardian - to be introduced into parliament shortly under last year's drugs act - will mean that those found with more than these specified amounts would be charged with possession with intent to supply. Under the act, dealers of cocaine and heroin face a maximum of life imprisonment. The plan for a 5g cannabis threshold marks a sharp reversal from David Blunkett's decision 18 months ago to ensure that cannabis possession was normally to be dealt with by confiscation and an informal warning.

The proposed thresholds are so low that the advisory committee, which discussed the issue on May 25, is believed to have warned the Home Office that they would cause policing problems. The committee suggested the cannabis threshold should be set at 28g, or 1oz. The experts also told ministers that the five tablet limit for ecstasy was low - given that they can be bought for 50p each in some areas, and some users take up to 10 in one session.

The Home Office letter to the ACMD, seen by the Guardian, says that ministers are setting thresholds at this stage only for the drugs which cause the most harm or which are most prevalent - heroin, crack, cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamines, and cannabis. It adds that the proposed levels for all the drugs - except amphetamines - are considerably lower than those originally proposed, because most respondents to a consultation on the proposals considered the limits excessive.

The government now proposes the following thresholds:

Cannabis

Ministers propose 5g, or less than 1/5th of ounce - enough for 10-20 joints. This compares with the original proposal of 4ozs or 133g of resin, and 500g or 20 bags of grass. The ACMD has replied that the limit should be set at 28g.

Ecstasy

Ministers propose 1.5g (equal to 5 tablets, costing £xx), compared with an original proposal for 10 tablets. The Home Office says it would be more straightforward to do it by weight than number of tablets, as the drug also comes in powder form. The ACMD said the limit should be 2g or 20 tablets, as that was two days' supply.

Amphetamines

Ministers have kept the proposed threshold at 14g but dropped an alternative of 10 x 1g wraps, saying dealers would simply change the size of deals to avoid going above the threshold. The ACMD said the threshold should be 10g, and questioned the rationale for a threshold higher than other drugs.

Heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine

Ministers are "minded to set" a threshold of 2g for possession, compared with the original proposal of 7g. The proposed number of individual wraps - a maximum of 10 in each case - has also been dropped for these class A drugs.

When the ACMD's technical committee considered the issue in April, it was pointed out that even Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, had misunderstood the proposals: "Many people still think that the provisions are about setting levels that are reasonable for personal us,e and that if they are caught with amounts below the thresholds they will not be arrested for possession with intent to supply. The reality is contrary to this." Martin Barnes, chief executive of Drugscope, an information charity, said this confusion had made ministers far more cautious. "We are concerned at the amounts being considered. The rationale for some thresholds remains unclear, and it is uncertain how many more people may be prosecuted with the more serious charge of intent to supply."

Paul Flynn, a Labour MP and drugs campaigner, said he hoped the ACMD would "give the proposals the attention they deserve, given that they come from a department in chaos. Let's hope they throw them out. I am sure that many people will throw up their hands in horror at this."

In January, Mr Reid's predecessor at the Home Office, Charles Clarke, confirmed Mr Blunkett's decision to downgrade cannabis from class B to class C. Mr Clarke conceded that the move had created confusion over the drug's legal status, but said it was based in part on the fact that the reclassification had not led to an increase in use among young adults, contrary to his expectations.

At the same time, Mr Clarke announced a crackdown on British cannabis farms and a public education campaign to stress both the harm and the illegal status of the drug.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Aside from being interesting, very useful information for UK-based members
	damm you are fast
	A good find

[Djvr16]

Where is this? Is it in effect yet? This sucks....

[Alfa]

So, even while one is not dealing & while both the Judge and the prosecutor know the defendant is not (how the hell can possesion of those quantities be dealing?), then the law would say they should all lie and prosecute the defendant for dealing? Yeah, that sounds justifyable.

[rocco_blitz]

this must be in the u.k. right?? cause in the states swim told me it is different in each state.Like in Ky,in certain counties get caught with 1 joint and then you get 14 days in jail.... In calif.get caught with as much as an once 28g and it is a pre payable ticket no jail,swim could go on and on on this topic but I think the previous post is in the u.k.

[wednesday]

this can't be true
we abide by truth
well what the government says is truth and then what they enforce as truth....
i cant understand how they can be so hypocritical

[Myzrael]

Madness!

I really hope The Netherlands are not going to follow with silly rules such as this. For christ sake...more than 5g and you are a dealer? Yeah sure!
I really hope there is going to be more progress in this field but at the moment I don't really see a big improved. It seems that more and more countries are making their rules even tighter.

[grecian]

IMO prison sentences for these amounts will be unenforcable. prisons in the uk are all overcrowded (i believe without exception). policies like this just seem to highlight the governments incompetence and lack of knowledge. it seems like blair and co are still trying for the hard-hitting headlines rather than sensibly thought through policies.

[Alfa]

They can always build more prisons.

[grecian]

It is indeed likely that this is what the government will try to do and personally i cant imagine a more dissatisfactory state of affairs than the Americanisation of our crime and rehabilitation systems (such as the introduction of private prisons.) The article points out that 'policing problems' may arise and is right to do so, the police are becoming less stretched (with the help of community support officers etc) but prosecuting ppl for offences such as 5g of cannabis will prove to be impractical, even a basic warning or caution is time consuming for the police to issue, nevermmind the statements, evidence and witnesses that would have to be prepared for harsher sentences.

This may not be strictly related to the topic but an interesting read all the same.

http://www.politics.co.uk/issuebrief/public-services/prisons/prison-overcrowding/prison-overcrowding-$366689.htm

What is prison overcrowding?

The British prison population has been increasing rapidly in recent years, and the prison estate has struggled to keep up with the rising demand.

As prisons are expensive and take a long time to build, the result of a lack of capacity has been overcrowding, which is when prisons have to house more inmates than they are designed for.

Overcrowding may be attributed to a number of factors, including failure to find and use effective alternatives to prison, under-funding of prison building programmes, bureaucratic inefficiencies in moving prisoners between facilities, and loss of existing capacity due to age and deterioration.


Background

The overall trend in the rate of imprisonment has been fairly consistent over the last fifty years. Between 1951 and 1981, judges were sending more and more people to prison, culminating in major overcrowding problems in the late 1970s. There was a short period of declining prison populations from 1981, when fines, community sentences and cautions were increasingly used as alternative punishments.

Another dip occurred in 1992 when new early release measures were introduced, following the 1991 Woolf Report into the Strangeways riots. Lord Woolf warned in the report that conditions in some prisons were "no longer tolerable" and warned that the prison population would double from 44,000 to 83,000 by 2008 on contemporary trends.

However, after less than a year, most of these measures were reversed, and the prison population began once again to rise rapidly, stimulated by the then Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard, who avowed that "prison works".

The Labour Government has taken various measures to reduce prison overcrowding since it came to power, with mixed results. The Narey reforms of 1999 reduced prisoner numbers by reducing the numbers held on remand, and there is now greater use of additional prison places in the private sector.

In 2003, an emergency extension to the Home Detention Curfew scheme was ordered by the Home Office, permitting prisoners to leave early with an electronic tag attached to monitor their movements.

Nonetheless, under both the Conservatives and Labour there has been a dramatic increase in the use of short custodial sentences in the last 20 years, with a major impact on the prison population.


Controversies

The main controversy surrounding the issue of prison overcrowding is its negative impact on inmates. There are fewer opportunities for rehabilitative work in overcrowded prisons due to a lack of supervision and inmates are confined to their cells for longer, causing greater tensions between prisoners and with prison staff.

Prison Service research shows that 10 of the 20 establishments with the highest incidence of suicide are also in the top 20 for turnover of population.

The Prison Reform Trust has warned that 2003 saw the highest levels of prison overcrowding on record. At the end of December 2003, 81 of the 138 prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded, the most overcrowded being Preston, which was holding 667 prisoners in accommodation intended for 356. At the same time, seven prisons were overcrowded beyond the maximum safe level.

At the end of November 2003, 16,500 prisoners were living two to a one-person cell - 22 per cent of the prison population at that time.

A September 2002 report by the Prison Reform Trust and National Advisory Council of Independent Monitoring Boards found that 77 per cent of Independent Monitoring Boards believed that overcrowding was threatening prison safety.

Building new prisons seems to have had little effect: of the thirteen new facilities built in the last ten years, nine were overcrowded by the end of 2003.


Statistics

On 28 November 2003 the prison population in England and Wales stood at 74,182. In the last two years the prison population has increased by nearly 6,000
The UK has the highest imprisonment rate in the European Union at 139 per 100,000, taking over from Portugal, which has an imprisonment rate of 131 per 100,000
In 2000 the capacity of the prison estate was 63,346 and the prison population was 65,194 (103 per cent of capacity); in 2001 the capacity was 63,530 and the population was 66,403 (105 per cent); in 2002 the capacity was 64,046 and the population was 71,112 (111 per cent); and in 2003 the capacity was 66,104 and the population was 73,627 (113 per cent)
By the end of the decade Home Office projections predict a prison population of anything between 91,400 and 109,600

Statistics 1 to 3: (Source: Prison Reform Trust briefing, 2003); Statistic 4: (Source: Home Office)


Quotes

"The conditions in which prisoners have to live in overcrowded cells, cells in which they have to eat together and in which they have to defecate in front of one another are we know deeply inadequate... but where we unnecessarily allow prisoners to languish in doubled up cells nearly all day and every day, the inadequate becomes the unacceptable."
Martin Narey, Commissioner for Correctional Services, Prison Service Conference, February 2003

"The overcrowding crisis in our jails means that some offenders no longer attend appeals because they fear that by the time they return to prison, their cells, will be allocated to another inmate."
Lord Woolf, Lord Chief Justice, speaking at the annual Perrie Lecture Awards, June 6 2003

"Overcrowding threatens all the inspectorates tests of a healthy prison, safety, respect, purposeful activity and respect."
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, annual report, 2001-2002

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Interesting read
	Nice article that sheds some light on the subject.

[grecian]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6031697.stm

Emergency measures to reduce prison overcrowding will not expose the public to more dangerous criminals, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has promised.
Home Secretary John Reid is expected to announce that some inmates will be moved from secure jails to open prisons and police cells.

Lord Goldsmith said those transferred would not include violent or sexual offenders and would be risk-assessed.

Meanwhile, the Lord Chief Justice has urged more use of community sentences.

'Proper checks'

The number of people in prison has reached a record 79,843, and in theory there are just 125 more spaces available.

Lord Goldsmith told BBC News: "People will not be moved between prisons without a proper risk assessment being made.

"And if there were a significant risk of someone being a danger, they wouldn't be moved to an open prison."

He added that only "a very small proportion of the overall prison population" could be suitably punished without using custody.

According to the Sunday Times, Fiona Radford, governor of Ford open prison in West Sussex, warned in August that if more inmates were transferred from secure prisons, there was a risk of more absconds and drug use.

She reportedly said in a memo to staff that she had informed the Prison Service.

A risk of more drug abuse and absconds had been "accepted as inevitable" by Mr Reid, the newspaper quotes the document as saying.

But Home Office minister Gerry Sutcliffe said: "John Reid and I certainly wouldn't want to put the public at risk.

"Any re-categorisation has got to be risk assessed and people have got to have not committed violent crimes or sexual crimes.

"No violent offenders or sexual offenders should be moved from category C to category D."

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Maltravers, has urged more use of community sentences, saying prison overcrowding made it difficult to rehabilitate inmates.

'Dangerous or inadequate?'

He told the Observer: "The idea that alternatives to custody is being soft is wrong."

The public must be educated to distinguish between the "brutal, dangerous offender and the inadequate who offends to get money for drugs".

Lord Phillips made his comments to the newspaper after going undercover to serve part of a community order doing manual work.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said more focus on drug rehabilitation and work-related training was needed in prisons.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg warned that open prisons must not become "dumping grounds" for dangerous criminals.

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said the government had an "obsession with keeping dangerous and persistent criminals out of prison".

[matti_2003]

Thats absolutly crazy and if enforced will lead to thousands of people being locked up just for having 5g of cannabis on them. I cannot see how 5grams could be seen as dealing as in the UK the standard weight that is purchaded is an eighth of an ounce (around 3.5grams) so the dealer as they will be seen will only have enough cannabis to supply 1 person.

[SPWIM]

Bloody stupid law. How much THC is in 5 grams of weed? How much MDMA is in 5 ecstacy tablets? I rest my case.

[turkeyphant]

Will 5 pills containing 50mg of MDMA and 100mg of caffeine result in the same punishment as 1500mg of crystal? There are numerous other examples one could use to demonstrate how ridiculous this will be.

[Trebor]

Am I the only one to think that the joint in the first picture is very badly rolled?

[mick mouse]

Actually, it looks like something called a "Dutch Tulip". At least that is what it was called back in SWIM's early days. A method of placing one rolling paper at an angle to another, thereby increasing the total size (length) of the paper. One would roll the joint leaving about 1 inch at the end free, pinch it off and then put hash in the last inch and finish rolling it. When SWIY would light it, the end would open up like a tulip.

Originally Posted by Trebor

Am I the only one to think that the joint in the first picture is very badly rolled?

[grecian]

perhaps, but you cant deny she is wearing some absolutely lovely rings

[Trebor]

And is using a Clipper lighter, also on the right middle finger is a soverign ring which, in my experience, is usually the sign of a chav or gypsie.

[SPWIM]

*cough* sarcasm *cough*

[mick mouse]

SWIM would REALLY like to see how one could get 10-20 joints the size of the one in the picture out of 5 grams! Are our cousins over the pond holding out on us or what? Maybe someone re-worked the metric system while we were busy building new prisons! LOL! As Alfa said, you can always build new prisons, look at the industry that has created in the States. Just the counselling fees for those who suffered broken homes, failed relationships, lack of contact with children, etc. should pay for it.