The Making Safer Public Spaces Approach Isn't Making Anyone Feel Safer
Why drug decriminalization isn't a compassionate strategy
On October 5, 2023, Peterborough Police Service issued the following statement, which they are calling “no-tolerance approach” to public illicit drug use.
Before this, we’d been following a strict “no-policy-is-the-best-policy” kind of policy, which worked about as well as you’d expect. Partly due to parent’s concerns about the potential side effects of their kids stepping on Hepatitis A needles, police chief Stuart Betts then rolled out the “Safer Public Spaces Approach.”
Essentially, it means police now give drug users a get-well card before directing them to the closest supervised-suicide facility. No charges. No arrests. No consequences of any kind. For those who read the statement and are wondering why it sounds so apologetic, it’s because even abject flaccidity is now viewed as “extreme” by the pseudo-compassion brigade.
We are aware that there will be people that are both accepting of this stance and those who are not. As we adopt this approach, it is important to acknowledge that addiction is an illness, and it is not the intent of the Peterborough Police Service to criminalize those who are afflicted with this illness. The intent is to promote the message that the Service is committed to safer public spaces for all residents. We will continue to work within a system that supports those whose mandate is the promotion of public health, and while we know it is an imperfect system, public safety cannot wait for perfection.
The Safer Public Spaces approach is about balancing the needs and expectations of all residents in our community. The Service understands and recognizes the need for a compassionate response for those suffering with addictions and expects officers to be kind in their engagements with individuals. The Service also knows that the community expects that public places such as parks, places of business, and most importantly places where our children go such as playgrounds should also be safe.
Apparently, and amazingly, other communites are amazed by this supposed “hard-line” approach and are now adopting the model as their own.
Now, being the chief of anything these days, let alone the chief of police, is a thankless job. It isn’t my intention to pretend I have all the answers, nor to criticize those on the ground — especially those in leadership — who are trying to find a workable solution to both sides of a debate. That being said, part of being a leader is being able to acknowledge when something isn’t working.
And the “Safe Spaces” approach, while better than doing nothing, isn’t really doing anything.
What it gets right
I appreciate Betts’ acknowledgement that there are two parties involved — those with addictions, and members of the community who reasonably expect a certain degree of safety. It’s important to remember that both ditches exist. On the one hand, there is always the risk of dehumanizing those in real suffering, or thinking that our lives could never get so bad that the prospect of opiates wouldn’t be compelling.
In the other ditch, municipalities become so “compassionate” that they no longer resemble liveable spaces, but sprawling treatment centres. Nobody, besides addicts, wants to live in a community with methadone clinics, injection stations, and shelters on every corner. And yet from every side, people trying to live normal lives are told their desire for normalcy and safety is elitist and hateful. Everyone, we’re told, must be part of the poverty “solution.”
Betts also acknowledges it is no accident that the increase in crime is not accidently correlated with the availability of illicit drugs. The reality of drug addiction is that it isn’t a hobby one indulges in at certain times of the day/week. The damage is not confined to a single compartment of life. This is why I also think it is a mistake to discuss other problems of infrastructure (homelessness) in isolation from addiction. Having worked in shelters for many years, I can attest that in most cases they’re connected.
The main points of the statement we disagree with are:
1. That addiction is an illness.
2. The criminalization is uncompassionate.
Addiction is an illness
Betts explicitly makes the argument here that “criminalizing people who are already facing . . . big challenges” is inhumane, and will only lead to further challenges. Here Betts joins most progressive advocates who say the answer to addiction isn’t consequences but redirection. When users are caught using, they are not charged, nor arrested, but directed to a drug consumption site, where they can be supported by staff to find the most sanitary way to kill themselves.
We may be able to understand why a person resorts to drugs and acknowledge that the most destructive habits don’t make anyone less made in the image of God, or less valuable. That is a reasonable extension of compassion. But to reduce addiction to an “illness” or “disease” is neither helpful, nor accurate. One journalist notes:
If addiction is a disease . . . why did some 75% of heroin-addicted Vietnam vets kick the drug when they returned home? It’s hard to picture a brain disease such as schizophrenia simply going away because someone decided not to be schizophrenic anymore.
My father quit smoking cold turkey. I quit being an alcoholic cold turkey. And cold turkey, by the way, is great on a calabrese bun with mayonnaise and black pepper. If addiction is what the experts say it is, neither of those things should be possible. The tallest heights my father could hope for is “ex-smoker.” Me, an “ex-alcoholic.” At best you can be in remission, but like any disease, it’s always ready to flare up again.
Some will note that addiction changes the structure of the brain. But the reality is that the brain is a malleable entity — it changes when you get old, learn a language, or fall in love. Dr. Marc Lewis, who suffered with addiction for most of his 20s notes:
To say that addiction changes the brain is really just saying that some powerful experience, probably occurring over and over, forges new synaptic configurations that settle into habits. Addiction may be a frightful, devastating and insidious process of change in our habits and our synaptic patterning. But that doesn’t make it a disease.
It is easy to see why addiction has picked up the nomenclature of disease. The victim of a terminal disease isn’t really responsible for anything. He can try different medications, but ultimately he’s doomed to a prison outside his making. If addiction is just a disease, than it would be cruel to punish the victims. If addiction is, however, an entrenched neural pathways to escape and pleasure, than that whole formula changes.
The problem is that this isn’t convenient for anyone, and will require hard things of both municipal government and the addicts themselves.
This assumption of illness has shaped the messaging surrounding addictions and homelessness. The community, we’re told, and their privileged white bias towards order and clean streets, has to change their perspective. We have to be more welcoming to tent encampments and the flailing, unhinged addicts in your grocery store. But none of this is reasonable or compassionate. It’s just straight up Alice in Wonderland tactics: “Pretend what you’re seeing is normal.”
Criminalization isn’t compassionate
Simply moving someone around who is found breaking the law — and we really should ask why we criminalized illicit drug use in the first place — isn’t a consequence. And it’s not a solution. At best it’s damage control; creating the illusion of helping the problem while not actually helping anything.
The threat of a fine, imprisonment, or mandatory rehabilitation, while not perfect, at least upholds the principle of consequences. We’re told that the threat of consequences will cause people to OD in out of the way places. But this, too, is a consequence, and must be weighed against the overall safety of residents. Because some people might OD, the solution can’t be making drug use easier. That’s like saying that because some people might drink themselves to death, we should get rid of DUI charges.
We don’t need to make it easier for addicts. We need to make it harder. Not through dehumanization, but through humanizing consequences. To relegate someone to a disabled animal, giving them “feeding stations” for their appetites (injection centres) isn’t “compassion.” It’s derangement.
This argument completely ignores the basis of law and order, which isn’t actually how a criminal feels, but whether he has broken the law. It may be that a murderer will be crushed by the 50-years life sentence — or as we would have it, capital punishment — which we lead to a whole other series of bad decision for him. That isn’t the point. The point is that he broke the law, and there are consequences for breaking the law. We hope the criminal will learn from the consequences, but we aren’t responsible — nor are we able — to discern what consequences will do to someone. We simply uphold them.
Stigma, and consequences, are a large part of what helps people stop making bad decisions. Removing them, although additional interventions may be necessary (see Alberta’s Compassionate Intervention Act) is certainly not going to stop people making bad decisions. Just like removing consequences for little Johnny hitting his sister is not going to stop him from hitting his sister. He may, and probably does, need intervention and redirection, but he absolutely does require consequences.
Until we affirm both of these truths, nothing is going to change.