Byrne grants, the anti-stimulus

I'm disappointed to see that the federal Byrne grant program - which gives block grants to the states to pay for hundreds of regional drug task forces across the country like the one in the infamous Tulia drug stings - made it into the version of the stimulus bill approved by the Senate, though at just one-third the funding level proposed by President Obma. Too bad. Perhaps there's still some remote chance that the program will be eliminated in the conference committee, but I'm not holding my breath.

Perhaps counterintuitively, it's Democrats who insist on propping up this drug war dinosaur, while the GOP has long supported eliminating it as counterproductive pork.

There's nothing stimulating to the economy about the Byrne grant program. It may employ more undercover drug cops, but their job is to disrupt the economy through petty drug arrests, filling up prisons that cost taxpayers instead of bolstering state and local coffers. As I wrote last month, "It really is time for national Democrats in Congress to join Republicans and dump this program, which is a massive driver of racial disparities in state-level incarceration. In some states, 85% of drug arrests are made by Tulia-style drug task forces, predominantly in black communities."

If conference committee members need justification for axing the program, they should watch the documentary film Tulia, Texas, which will air nationwide on PBS tomorrow night, Feb. 10. See Grits' review of the film when it premiered last year at the SXSW film festival, a report from a local, Austin screening, a preview of the film from the Plainview Herald, and a discussion guide for the event (pdf) created by the filmmakers. The show starts at 9 p.m. CST on Austin's KLRU; check local listings.