Let's Not Rush to Criminalize 'Bad' Parents
The "criminalization of parenting" is what libertarian-leaning Washington Post blogger Radley Balko calls these cases. Balko deplores the increasing use of the criminal justice system to address problems that used to be handled by families, friends, churches and other community institutions.
I suspect that our society's faith in those traditional institutions has declined with the rising, widely held suspicion that those institutions are under siege and breaking down.
That fear helps to explain why Tennessee has taken the extreme and, I believe, dangerous step of passing the nation's first state law that specifically criminalizes taking drugs while pregnant.
Only a few days after the law went into effect on July 1, Monroe County police arrested Mallory Loyola, 26, after both she and her newborn infant tested positive for meth, according to police reports.
There's no question that the law is well intended. For some drug offenders, arrest may be the last-resort way to get them into the treatment they need. But a new danger to unborn children rises when the emphasis on prosecution deters women with drug and alcohol problems from seeking the prenatal care that they need.
In recent years we have seen a broad spectrum of politicians and activists -- from the libertarian right to the progressive left -- push for alternative sentencing that reduces the expensive mass incarceration of nonviolent offenders, mostly in the government-sponsored war on drugs. We also need to look seriously for alternatives to prosecution that can avoid a new war on parents.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
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