JRESE: The Connection between cannabis decriminalization and mass incarceration

Originally published on the JRESE website

Humanitas360 Institute is a non-profit organization (501.c3) based in the United States with a regional office in Brazil. We work to build fairer and more egalitarian societies in several Latin American countries,with the support of our advisors and collaborators in Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia and Guatemala, as well as our teams in Brazil and the United States. Our goal is to promote the reduction of violence, active citizenship, climate justice and transparence.

Within our Entrepreneurship Behind and Beyond Bars Program, the main project promotes training and income generation through Social Cooperatives of the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, formed inside and outside prisons, who, in addition to being deprived of liberty, also support victims of domestic violence. H360 acts as an incubator for cooperatives and as a trainer for each member of the cooperative, providing initial capital, product development support and business management, as well as legal support, social assistance and spirituality. Currently, with units in São Paulo and São Luís (MA), it is expanding to Rio Grande do Sul.

Another important project within the same Entrepreneurship Behind bars Program is Lab 360, which promotes the supply of computers to penitentiary units and the organization of virtual social visits and distance learning so that inmates can hold videoconferences with their families and continue their studies. The equipment is delivered to prison centers as a legacy for the development of educational projects, technological training and distance higher education. It is currently implemented in the states of Maranhão, Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte, and its expansion to Rio Grande do Sul is planned.

In our Information and Research Program, we highlight the Citizen Engagement Index in the Americas, a comparative study of the level of civic-social engagement and participation of the residents in Latin America countries. A data survey conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) with methodology developed by H360, EIU and a panel of international experts. Its first edition, in 2018, included (in order of level of): United States, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala and Venezuela. A new edition of the study is planned for 2023.

The same information and research program resulted in the Guide for People Experiencing Detention, a step-by-step guide on how to acquire documents, civil rights and rebuild life after incarceration, and provide guidance on how to resume studies, access public social assistance platforms, take care of health, and obtain legal assistance. The same program also generated Weaving Freedom, a 25-minute documentary that reveals the contradictions of the Brazilian criminal justice system from the perspective of women working in social cooperatives supported by H360. As inmates in an extremely mixed society, these women help us better understand how mass incarceration and the “war on drugs” increase the power of criminal gangs. “Version 6” received the UN Nelson Mandela Award in 2017.

In addition, we have developed a series of joint projects with other social and environmental organizations through our Partner Program. Institutional relations. Together with the Cannabinoid Center of Excellence and the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University of ABC, we created Family Cannabis & Children project, scientific research with 200 children suffering from autism spectrum syndrome, for whom the therapeutic use of Cannabidiol is indicated. When completed, it will be the largest research ever conducted in the world on the subject. In collaboration with the NGO Cataki and the Federal University of Minas Gerais, we are developing a Guide for Solid Waste Pickers working on the streets of large Brazilian cities, promoting collaboration between autonomous waste pickers and waste pickers organized in cooperatives, aiming to maximize the economic return of this activity.

For details of these projects and to follow our daily work, please visit our website at www.humanitas360.org. In our work to promote the reduction of violence and the active citizenship through these different projects, we always run into a deep lack of awareness, both on a personal and social level, of the perverse articulation between the structural racism that still prevails in our country, machismo, the evils of the war on drugs policy and mass incarceration. Therefore, the changes we want to promote are not only legal, regulatory or public policy changes, but, above all, paradigm and mentality changes. Brazil is currently the country with the third largest incarcerated population on the planet, behind only China and the United States. There are more than 750,000 people in prison, with 30% of men and 65% of women in prison for drug law offenses. A good number of these women in the country are also mothers and have found in trafficking a means of survival in a scenario of poverty, unemployment and economic crisis.

The Humanitas 360 Institute works with some of these mothers in social cooperatives operating within prisons to promote skills and generate income opportunities for a new future. And that’s how H360 began to examine in more detail the data on social, intentional and unintentional changes caused by decades of criminalization and stigmatization of marijuana. A policy that violated the fundamental rights of several generations, and which still affects today disproportionately certain populations and localities through violent police actions and mass incarceration. If today the medical and industrial cannabis industry seems so far from the Brazilian imagination, despite the growing demand, this has not always been the case. In the 1970s, a Brazilian doctor in São Paulo and a Bulgarian Israeli chemist in Jerusalem were at the forefront of research on the anticonvulsant properties of the medicinal plant Cannabis sativa, and together they published more than 40 articles on the subject. The results of the Brazilian research left no doubt about the beneficial effects of the plant in people with severe and refractory epilepsy, and scientists indicated this potential in their articles.

Thirty years passed and, without interest from the legislator, the study was restricted to a small circle of researchers. Until a group of mothers of children suffering from severe and refractory epilepsy became aware of practices in the United States with very positive results. But the industry has been repelled by the difficulties inherent in the use of a banned and criminalized substance that could otherwise generate significant echo activity. Estimates indicate that the legalization of industrial hemp in Brazil, for example, would generate, after four years, more than one billion dollars in sales of its derivatives, while the state would raise more than US$68 million, with a few hundred thousand jobs.

How to advance in the fight for the decriminalization of cannabis in the country? What would be the impact of this change on incarceration rates and, more specifically, on the black population in general and on black women in particular? How has this change been implemented in other countries and what results have been obtained?

The cases of cannabis legalization and the possibilities of public reparation policies?

The case of cannabislegalisation and the potential for reparation of public policies?

How to advance in the fight for the legalization of the use of medical cannabis in Brazil? What would be the economic repercussions of this change for the country and what are the public health benefits for our population? How has this change been implemented in other countries and what results have been obtained?

What would be the impact of the large-scale adoption of entrepreneurship for prisoners and ex-criminals in the country’s rates of criminal recidivism? What would be the benefits of this change in relation to the black population in general and black women in particular? Are there similar experiences in other countries? If so, what were the results obtained?