Prison overcrowding is a widespread problem in Latin America, primarily because of harsh drug-sentencing laws and inadequate budgets, but Costa Rica may be setting a useful example for dealing with it. In most countries, guards control the perimeter, but groups of prisoners or criminal gangs organize and control life inside the prison compound. Rehabilitation and re-integration programs are limited.

Not surprisingly, there is little political leadership for prison reform; the issue wins few points with the general public. Even dramatic events – like prison riots in Venezuela or prison fires in which hundreds of young men die as in Honduras – don’t generate interest in prison reform. A key component of the criminal justice system – as a deterrent, a punishment, and as a provider of rehabilitation and reintegration services that will reduce recidivism – the prisons are often neglected.

While Costa Rica faces growing drug-related problems, a multi-country analysis by the Washington Office on Latin America of persistent criminal justice and prison problems in Latin America – aimed at identifying strategic solutions – indicates that the country stands out as having undertaken at least modest reforms of its prisons to prevent them from becoming the breeding grounds for increasingly hardened criminals and gangs.

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Costa Rica: A new model for prison standards in Latin America?

By Sergio Sánchez Bustos, President Latinoamerica Reforma Foundation

On September 8th the Chilean government approved the legal permission to the first cannabis crop in Chile for medical purposes to 

municipality. In this project our Foundation, 

 has worked as scientific and political advisor.

The permission is for a crop of 850 square meters, and for a total of 450 plants approximately, and is totally legal, according to 20.000 law.

They will be growing for a study on cancer patients, who have pain and already are under treatment. The whole group will be 200 adults, and it is expected a long term, study of at least one year. The patients will come from Daya Foundation and from the own Municipality, and it is expected to improve their life quality, decrease the pain and vomits and nauseas.

This project has been made possible because the intense work of activists in Chile, who have allowed this historical step forward a new drug policy in Chile. Other projects are waiting to be allowed right now, and it is possible that in a few months they will get the permission.

Medical cannabis crop allowed by Chilean government

Poor young men, slumdwellers and single mothers are hurt the most by anti-drug policies in Latin America, according to representatives of governments, social organisations and multilateral bodies meeting at the Fifth Latin American Conference on Drug Policies.

During the Sept. 3-4 conference held in San José, Costa Rica, activists, experts and decision-makers from throughout the region demanded reforms of these policies, to ease the pressure on vulnerable groups and shift the focus of law enforcement measures to those who benefit the most from the drug trade.

Today things are backwards – the focus is on “the small fish” rather than “the big fish”, Paul Simons, the executive secretary of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), told IPS.

The proposals set forth during the meeting recommended an overhaul of the legal systems in Latin America, to reduce incarceration and establish sentences proportionate to minor crimes. The participants argued that laws and the justice systems should focus on cracking down on the big interests involved in drug trafficking.

They also recommended that amounts for legal personal possession should be established, along with measures such as the decriminalisation of some drugs or the creation of markets controlled by the state, along the lines of what Uruguay is doing in the case of marijuana.

The current policies give rise to cases like that of Rosa Julia Leyva, an indigenous Mexican woman who now works in the Mexican interior ministry’s National Commission on Security.

Leyva was imprisoned in 1993 for carrying a woven bag with a small package of heroin, which was given to her by a friend who paid her plane ticket in exchange for help with her baggage. It was the first time she had ever left the Petatlán mountains in the southwest state of Guerrero. Until her arrest, she told IPS, she thought she was carrying money or clothes.

At the time, she was the prototype of the women who are constantly thrown into Latin American prisons for drug smuggling: an illiterate 29-year-old, the mother of a five-year-old daughter, sentenced to a quarter century in prison for possession of heroin.

Latin America’s anti-drug policies feed on the poor

Drug law reform is finally on the government’s agenda after years of drug legislation drift under previous Nationalist administrations. Over the years, the debate in Malta has swung between the headline-catching, but now widely discredited, policy of a ‘war on drugs’, to decriminalisation and legalisation in certain specific cases, and medical and social rehabilitation.

It is now widely recognised in most civilised countries and by world health authorities that drug users should be regarded by society as people who need medical help, not retribution.

Careful decriminalisation, or even legalisation, and treatment are now the practical way forward.

The government’s amendments to the current legislation will not begin to be debated until the House returns from its summer recess on October 15. Its draft law on drugs is enlightened and in keeping with the approach being adopted in most advanced European countries.

It proposes that users found in simple possession for the first time would appear before a justice commissioner, who would give warnings and impose administrative fines on the user. Repeat offenders would appear before a board that would set conditions for rehabilitation.

The reforms would not remove all criminal deterrents for drug use. The government is proposing that breaking the conditions set for repeat offenders would be viewed as a criminal offence.

The handling of drug-related cases and decriminalisation in Malta

In 2013, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance reached 6.7 million people. There is more on this impact in the short film below and you can read the personal stories of some of the individuals behind these numbers. People like Momina, Rachel, Marc and Ricardo,Shaleen and Abhina, Rose and many others who have chosen to share their stories with you to help raise awareness, reduce stigma, and increase support for HIV programmes. For more information download the Alliance's 2013 Report and Accounts.

The impact of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in 2013

On 9th September, the Global Commission on Drug Policy will launch its latest report - 

Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies that Work

, at a press conference in New York City, USA.

Since 2011, the Commission has worked with partners around the world to identify alternatives to the failed war on drugs. Taking Control recommends a new approach that puts public health, the safety of communities, human rights and development at the center of drug policy.

The new report includes groundbreaking recommendations for a major paradign shift in global drug policy.

To take the drug policy debate mainstream, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a short animation film that explains the failure of the war on drugs.

Global Commission on Drug Policy to launch new groundbreaking report

International organisations invited NGOs to participate in the 2014 Global Day of Action on June 26, to raise awareness of alternatives to punitive drug policies. Answering the call, we launched the “Room in the Eight” campaign in Budapest. We contracted a webdesigner and PR firm, Urban Communications, to provide us with technical assistance on graphic design, advertising and on-site campaigning. The aim of the campaign was to educate and mobilise the general public, especially residents of the Budapest 8th district, to support innovative harm reduction solutions as alternatives to criminalisation. The goal is to keep harm reduction on the agenda of political decision-makers, and open the first supervised injection facilities in the city.

The local mayor has been trying to convince local residents that the solution is to close down needle exchange programs, and rely on law enforcement to eliminate drug use. We would like to convince people that 

the real solution is not less, but more, harm reduction

We realised that there was a significant gap between the real public health harms of the open drug scene, and the harms perceived by local residents. For example, local non drug users are much more concerned about drug litter on the street, than about drug users sharing injecting equipment. In reality, the chance of someone getting infected by touching a used needle on the street is minimal, whereas the risk of transmission from sharing injecting equipment is huge. We needed to communicate our message in a way which would appeal to most audiences, especially to those who live in the neighbourhood.

We therefore stressed the beneficial effects of harm reduction services on the harms perceived by local residents: the presence of unofficial shooting galleries, drug litter on the streets, and nuisance caused by street drug use. The solution we proposed, was to create a safe, hygienic environment for drug users to inject their drugs, using sterile equipment – that is, to open supervised injection rooms in the 8th district (“Room in the 8”). This is beneficial, not only for drug users (by reducing the incidence of blood-borne infections and overdoses), but for non-users as well, by reducing the prevalence of street injection and getting rid of unofficial shooting galleries.

Room in Budapest's 8th District - Campaign Report

All 43 police forces in England and Wales have agreed to adopt a new government code of conduct on the use of their powers to stop and search members of the public.

Home Secretary Theresa May had said the technique was being misused so often that it was damaging relations between the public and police.

Police will now record every outcome resulting from stop and search.

There will also be more limits on using the controversial "Section 60" stops.

Stop and search: Police code of conduct launched in the UK

IDPC is looking for a motivated new volunteer to support our communications work! The selected candidate will help us enhance IDPC’s visibility by supporting a comprehensive communication strategy, and contribute to the smooth running of our work by providing research and administrative support. Ideally, the volunteer would commit to work at IDPC for a minimum period of three months (either part- or full-time, depending on the candidate's availability). For more information about the position, have a look at the full description below.

If you are interested in volunteering for us, please 

IDPC recruits communications volunteer

Colombia’s National Dialogue for the Future of Drug Policy convened for the first time on Friday to begin a discussion about drug policy reform with members of the public.

According to the Minister of Justice, Colombia needs to begin looking for alternatives to repressive drug policies.

“We do not think that the solution to the drug problem is prison. If it were, we would have fixed the problem [by now],” said Minister Yesid Reyes Alvarado, upon opening the first session of the National Dialogue for the Future of Drug Policy.

In a search for alternative solutions, members of academia, political groups, and unions were invited to participate in the first of 10 national and regional forums organized by the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, and the Ministry of Public Affairs.

Ministry of Justice opens dialogues on Colombia’s ‘failed’ drug policy

The head of State and Government of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solis will lead the Opening Ceremony of the main discussion forum on drug policy in Latin America, previously held in Buenos Aires (2009), Rio de Janeiro (2010), Mexico City (2011) and Bogotá (2012), arrives to Central America for the first time.

The Fifth Latin American Conference on Drug Policy

, and ACEID as local organizer, will be held on 3rd and 4th September at the Radisson Hotel in San José, 

. The Conference is sponsored by the Open Society Foundations and supported by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Organization of American States (OAS), among others.

The Latin American Conference provides a platform to encourage multisectorial work among policy makers, academics, civil society and those affected by the policies implemented to address the problems associated with drugs. This year’s edition will be particularly important because of the 

, the visible failure of the paradigm of the "war on drugs", the experience of regulation of the cannabis market in Uruguay, Washington and Colorado, and the discussions and decriminalization draft bills in Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Argentina, among other countries in the region.

In addition, the Conference is framed in a series of regional events such as the submission of the Report of the upcoming 

 integrated by ex-presidents and global figures, to be held in New York, USA, and the 

 that will take place in Antigua, Guatemala, on September 19, in which the regional States will give input from the Fifth Latin American Conference on Drug Policy.

The panels will address the following topics:

Drug consumption and public health approaches in Latin America

Round table planning for the "UNGASS 2016"

Among other satellite events, the IV Seminar for “Drug Policy in Latin America” Journalists will be held the day before the conference, with capacity to host 25 journalists from the region.

In addition, during the Conference, the Latin American Award for Journalism About Drugs, which is being selected by the jury, will be presented.

For more information, please contact: prensa@conferenciadrogas.com

The Opening Ceremony of the Fifth Latin-American Conference on Drug Policy will be led by the President of Costa Rica 

Rumah Cemara and partner organisation AKSI Lombok NTB initiated programme for young people who inject drugs to improve access to health care which is considered to be very low, and on lack of attention and involvement of teenagers in HIV/AIDS prevention.

The youth programme involving a group of teenagers is ‘providing space’ for them to share ideas and information. The programme aims to develop a strategy to integrate the needs of young age people in drug-related services as well as HIV/AIDS and Sexual Reproductive Health Rights.

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