Posted March 14, 2006
Special to MarijuanaNews.com

Having no choice, Steve Kubby pled guilty today to
violating his probation and will have to return to Placer County jail for up to
60 days; however, it is expected that he will be released after serving just 20
days, inasmuch as the jail remains overcrowded.
See

Kubby Out of Jail, But Not Yet Free. (Are any of us?) Must Return to Court On
March 14 On Probation Violation Charges. Exclusive to MarijuanaNews

Moreover, it is unlikely that Placer County would want
to hold him beyond 20 days, because Steve has just enough Marinol to last him
for that period. If Placer were to hold him longer they could then be confronted
with a demand that they start paying for life-saving medicine for their
prisoner, and we all know that would send the wrong message to children.

After he is released, he will
then have to serve two and half years of felony probation, but no added time,
and he will be allowed to use whole cannabis during probation. Of course, he
will be homeless, his life in tatters, and he will be almost 60 years old with
terminal cancer. The State of California and Canada will have spent huge sums to
have brought him to this point. What a triumph of stupidity and evil!

As I have previously said, I think that it is
unfortunate that this case is – however understandably – seen as just being
about medical marijuana. Kubby needs cannabis to live, and the whole case began
with an anonymous letter alleging that he was selling marijuana, but this case
really should as a complete failure of the California legal system. (And a
disgrace to Canada, as well.)

See

Steve Kubby’s Life Is In Danger Because Immigration Canada and California Law
Enforcement Broke the Law.
and

Steve Kubby Is the Only One In This Story Who Has NOT Broken The Law, But He
Faces the Death Penalty.

It is difficult to evaluate all of the individual cases
such as Kubby’s to quantify the problem with prosecutors and the courts, but the
facts about the state’s enormous prison system are there for all to see. The
prisons are both the means and the end of the criminal justice system. The
“system” is responsible for the prisons and the prisons are the system’s
ultimate tool. (The death penalty has only limited utility.)

The February 24th 2005 edition
of the The Economist reported,
“The state’s (California’s) imprisonment
rate—455 out of every 100,000 people were inside in 2003—is a little below the
national average and well behind Texas (702) and Louisiana (801); but it is
still several times that of Britain or indeed any other developed country.
California’s jails now house 163,000
prisoners (each at an annual cost of $31,000); that is more than France, Germany
and the Netherlands combined.

In an American context,
California’s prisons stand out for two things: overcrowding and recidivism. The
state has only 32 prisons, which hold twice as many people as they were designed
for. By contrast, New York state has 65,000 inmates in 70 prisons and Florida
has 82,000 in 121 facilities. Worse, California’s “correctional facilities”
singularly fail to correct: three in four prisoners will be convicted of another
crime within three years—and three out of five will be back in prison.
(Nationally, a quarter are back in prison for new crimes and another quarter are
back in prison for parole violations.)…

The California Correctional
Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), which represents 31,000 guards, has been a
generous donor to governors from both parties—and has been well looked after
itself. The average guard’s salary rose from $14,400 in 1980 to $54,000 in 2002,
almost twice the national average for a prison officer.”

On October 11, 2005, an
article in the LA Times By Maura Dolan, reported,
“There is almost no aspect
of California corrections, adult or juvenile, that is not subject to a court
order, and almost all of those are the result of suits brought by the Prison Law
Office,” said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency….

Earlier this year, U.S.
District Judge Thelton Henderson reported that at least 34 inmates had died
recently because of neglect, incompetence and “even cruelty” by medical staff.
Henderson’s action followed a lawsuit by the Prison Law Office.

On a tour of medical
facilities at San Quentin, the judge observed a dentist who neither washed his
hands nor changed his gloves after placing his hands in patients’ mouths.

“On average, an inmate in
one of California’s prisons needlessly dies every six to seven days due to
constitutional deficiencies in the … medical delivery system,” Henderson said.

Of course, we are supposedly doing all of this “for the children”, so
consider this Los Angeles Times editorial, STATE PRISONS’ REVOLVING DOOR, An
Education in Brutality, published on February 19, 2004, said,
“The images of
what goes on in California’s juvenile prisons are vivid: Teenagers beat and stab
others and are beaten themselves, in daily and expectable routines. Some are
confined 23 hours a day in 4-by-8 cells, where for meals they must suck
pulverized bologna and milk from a straw stuck through a small metal slit. The
mentally ill are often thrown into predatory general populations, getting only
sporadic medical treatment.

Five newly released studies recount in numbing detail this brutality of life
for the 4,000 offenders locked up by the California
Youth Authority.

At a hearing on the CYA today, Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) plans to
denounce the 11-prison system as “a fraud to the taxpayers, who expect
rehabilitation and safer communities for the $80,000 they spend annually on
every CYA ward … a fraud to the parents who hope their children would be
changed for the better, only to [see them] come out harder, angrier, more
mentally unstable or more criminally sophisticated.”
See

Program Notes for the MarijuanaNews World Report for April 25, 2005 Prison
Population Soars. Kids Abuse Pharmaceuticals. Feds Will Use SF Club Info. Bush
Fails On Border. Russell Crow Defends Corby.

and

The Patriot Act Hits A New Low As The Prison/Probation/Parole Population Hits A
New High.

and

Abuse In Prisons: Iraqi and American. Bush says, “That is not the way we do
things in America.” No, That Is Exactly The Way We Do Things in America!
Especially In Texas and Florida.

and

Prohibition and The Prison State. “Protecting” Youth and Minorities. In DEAland,
The UK and France Prisons Are Full.
and

The UK Criminal Justice System Is “In Chaos.” Prisons Full. More Reasons
Cannabis Prohibition Must End.

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