By Erica C. Barnett
On this week’s Seattle Nice, we brought in a bona fide expert—University of Washington research professor Caleb Banta-Green, who heads up the university’s Center for Community-Engaged Drug Education, Epidemiology and Research—to discuss the city’s plans to “disrupt” drug use by creating Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA) zones.
The initial zones, which the council approved this week, include areas where drug users congregate in the University District, Capitol Hill, Belltown, downtown, Pioneer Square, and the Chinatown-International District. Judges will be able to order people charged with misdemeanor drug crimes to agree to stay out of one or multiple SODA zones. People who are subsequently caught inside those areas can be charged with a gross misdemeanor, a more serious crime, even if they are never convicted of the underlying misdemeanor offense.
Although Sandeep said the new banishment zones will help police “disrupt” concentrated areas of drug use and reduce “levels of addiction,” Banta-Green noted that this strategy has not worked in the past—and you don’t even have to go back to the old Sidran-era SODA zones for an example.
When the city adopted a “nine-and-a-half-block strategy” to crack down on drug users and dealers in downtown Seattle, an initial flood of arrests did not lead to lasting changes. In fact, those nine and a half blocks are part of the downtown SODA zone. It’s hard to imagine clearer evidence that this “targeted” strategy was ineffective than the fact that drug use and sales have continued, and intensified, in the area.a
“The [same] folks are still out there,” Banta-Green said. “They’re just getting squeezed around, and you’re generally able to find them somewhere else. The challenge is that we’ve really made no attempts to put services where people are.”
As for the argument that a “time-out” in jail is just what many people need to inspire them to abstain from drugs and alcohol, Banta-Green agreed that there are people who say jail saved their lives. But, he noted, that’s not because jail is a good form of treatment, but because it’s often the only form of “treatment” people get.
“Have I heard from dozens, if not hundreds, of people who said, ‘Jail is what saved my life?’ Yes. And I said [to them], ‘But what if you had gotten housing and health care and good quality counseling? And they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s just that I didn’t have access to that. I had access to jail. … And we know that jail is the most expensive place to get those services, [from] the folks who have the least time and resources and qualifications to do it.”
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As a Seattle Public Library employee who wants to make sure the Library is truly available for all Seattle residents, it disturbs me that the International District/Chinatown Branch is inside the SODA zone in the ID. We have social service librarians helping make sure that information about essential services is available at our branches. Now it seems like the City Council is making it harder for people to access that information, including the people who need it the most.
This is a valid concern. Consider that for someone harming the community due to a nexus with drug use, SODA is an alternative to incarceration.
Per the SPL website there’s a social services librarian is staffed full time at the central library, which falls outside of any SODA zone: https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/civics-and-social-services/social-services-referrals
Legislate for the many, who live, work, recreate and go to school in and around these zones. Not for the few who choose to do illegal activities there.
Found Caleb Banta-Green to be a somewhat disappointing guest. I didn’t learn anything new. Difficult problems were hand-waved at with overly-simplistic solutions like “just don’t call it treatment” … by building centers with multiple services. Eventually people will come around he says.
Worst response was when David asked what a parent should do when they live near an open air drug market and uncomfortable walking through it, and Caleb’s response was that we need to accept that opioid addiction is a 2-3 year process and this all needs to be accepted in the meantime, because enforcement doesn’t work. Seemed to have no consideration about this isn’t an answer and that new addicts reset the clock.
Overall we should wonder about this title of “expert”. Doing academic research to publish social science that never replicates has little to do with practically solving public policy. Where’s the track record of success? Plenty of political platitudes but it’s not hard to find even more established academics like Keith Humphries (Stanford) with differing views. Recent Ezra Klein episode with him is worth a listen.
Why don’t you post these updates about the podcast on the same day you post the podcast? I listened to this last week in Spotify…
Wrong objective function. You ask “what will best make these poor tragic junkies and tweakers happy?!”
The majority of boring normie folks are asking Govt to get the junkies and tweakers out of their neighborhood. Now.
ECB does love to preach to the choir.
Newsflash – most of these folks won’t accept “help” until they’re forced to.
I think your lobotomy has done you wonders, bubbly. Keep at it! But you should really stop listening to those shock jocks,you really need to look out for what’s left of your brain matter.
I don’t do talk radio (and spend lots of my own time being plenty hostile to actual MAGA folks online and in real time when I encounter them). I wish I could find your naivete and willful ignorance shocking, but sadly don’t.
“Plenty hostile to MAGA,” sure you are, a known liar states what he is.
“naivete and willful ignorance,” Oh, your lobotomy has you projecting again. Tut tut. Time to have a word with your therapist.
Calling people who disagree with you “liars!!!!” makes you sound even more like a petulant eight-year-old than you already do.
Point out one thing I have ever written that is demonstrably a lie. Not a difference of opinion – an actual lie that I know is a lie.
What’s next from you, bubbly? Will you start denying you issue threats and wishes of harm on others too? How childish of me!
Way to change the subject. I’m reducing you to the petulance level of a seven year old (and yes, that’s an insult).
I defy you to name an actual threat beyond expressing a vague wish that you would experience what lots of other people have (including me – one car stolen twice/one catalytic converter stolen/three separate car prowl incidents). That’s not a threat, kid – it’s a plea for empathy from a rather callow young person who can’t see past their own nose.
But yeah, I’m lying about all of that – along with the FACT that I work for a social justice nonprofit, that I once spit a mouthful of half-chewed schnitzel at a Trump rallier in Leavenworth, that I’ve been voting Democrat since before (almost certainly) you were born, and that I’m indeed a “normie”. ECB know
PS – I’m cynical and sarcastic, but I ain’t naive and I ain’t lying.
“the normies you are casually dismissing wish you’d get your car or house broken into (or maybe your bike stolen), but I’m certainly not there yet personally.”
Yeah, it’s awfully childish of me to point out you are the only one in any comments on this blog who is talking about who deserves to have crimes committed against them and who doesn’t. Oh sure, you’ve put the words in some non-existent person’s mouth, and therefore you’re not saying them. Got it. If that’s your argument then that’s big: you are actually more stupid then I
thought you were. You should take a bow, bubbly!
There’s no question that we need a significant shift in investment and social services to help those caught up in drugs and/or human trafficking, but in the meantime residents need to know they are not going to be preyed upon or shot at as they go about their business.
I haven’t heard a suggestion of how this might to be accomplished, although I have read that middle-class people living in these neighborhoods have no right to try to protect their safety instead of helping others who come from damaging backgrounds and are causing harm.
There may be places where altruism outweighs public safety, but I don’t think Seattle is one of them.
Not gonna happen. Most (all?) whiners don’t want to pay for treatment or any other service, they just want more cops to shove the problem to some other neighborhood. That’s what has always happened, that’s what will happen, and let’s be honest, that means pushing it on the south end where all the poors live.
The biggest problems is people like you like to think you have honest and decent solutions, but all you ever offer are the same old nasty ones that never worked before and simply push the problem on someone else. Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyone who disagrees with you hates middle class “normies” and loves junkies/pimps/enemy of the day shooting guns through kitchen windows. Sure. Your type doesn’t like to listen, only posture and “know you’re right.” All you know how to do is denigrate and ignore, anything as long as there are more cops who can rub somebody else’s face in it. You have yours, so who cares?
Yours is the kind of attitude that will make it gratifying when your exclusion laws are rolled back once again. Hopefully our city won’t have to descend as far as it has in the past before we are able to.
….yours is the kind of attitude that sort of makes the normies you are casually dismissing wish you’d get your car or house broken into (or maybe your bike stolen), but I’m certainly not there yet personally.
I don’t dismiss normies, just those pretending to be. Oh yeah, you’re not personally threatening, but you would think somebody would. Uh huh. Nice lobotomized thought there. I don’t personally find you an awful human being, but I could see how some might.
About the “new” S.O.D.A. laws.
Jail is not what these people need. S.OD.A. has not worked in the past, it won’t work now. All that is happening is removing a player or two just so others can sp in and tat their place. People are still going to buy, sell and use drugs in said districts with or without said “laws”. It is a waste of tax payers money, a waste of the police’s time and clogging up the jails for no difference being made. Prosecuting these people are criminalized the little guy who now has a record that interferes with their ability to get anywhere in life because of a criminal record that stops them at the door to life. If you don’t experience what they do you have no clue what their lives entail nor what they’ve gone through in their lives. So don’t judge until you have walked in their shoes.
Oh, and let me add that giving users housing, health care, and good quality counseling, while laudable goals, also teach those folks that addiction can be a good thing that leads you to these other good things. Of course, meanwhile they’re preying on everyone and their homes and cars
Oh how wrong you are. You don’t know these people. A few bad apples and you’ve labeled them all. Bravo! You have successfully boxed everyone in one box. Shame on you! How would you like being thrusted into a “you are worthless” label just because you happen to be in the same income bracket, same circles and same friends. Typical of someone who just picks and chooses what they are going to read about or listen to others. Get out there and mingle with these “useless” people and find out for yourself if your words are actually true or not instead of listening to others. Actions speak louder than words. And you my friend have no action. Only talk. Too bad, you might learn something you would never expect.
Caution, you’re hyperventilating.
If the SODA areas only force these folks to move, great! At least there’s a little discomfort for them, versus none right as they’re allowed to ply their trade openly and brazenly. At the very least, we’re not teaching our kids to disrespect the law as they see the selective enforcement of some laws and not others. As adults, I know we resent it, or at least a fair number of us do.
It sounds from the responses of your expert here that he wanted to please you so did his best to put the spin he knew you’d appreciate on things, but I got the distinct impression we might have heard something different had there been a different interlocutor
Personal “Intuition” Trumps Evidence.
What evidence? The evidence your side hand waves to but never produces? The evidence that focused on addicts and not neighborhoods? The evidence that is over-fitting data from alcohol addicts to apply to the fentanyl crisis?
And what about the research from Europe shows shutting down open air drug markets leads to better crime and health outcomes?