cable or satellite provider. for nearly 20 years, in depth on book tv has featured the nation's best-known nonfiction writers for live conversations about their works. this year as a special project, we are featuring best-selling fiction writers for our monthly programs. in-depth fiction in addition. join us live next sunday, february 4 at noon eastern with colson whitehead, author of the 2016 bestseller "the underground railroad," awarded the national book award and the pulitzer prize. his other novels include "the intuitionist" and "sag harbor." in-depth fiction edition with colson whitehead, sunday, february 4 on book tv on c-span2. >> host: joining us now is c.j. ciaramella, a criminal justice reporter with "reason" magazine,

here to talk about his recent piece about drug-free zones and sentencing. we are talking about it as part of our spotlight on magazines series. thank you for joining us today. guest: thanks for having me. host: what made you want to have a look at this topic in particular? guest: the reason we started looking into this is the tennessee legislature is considering shrinking the size of their drug-free school zones. they considered it last year at are doing it again this year. several states have also done this. drug-free school zone laws exist in all 50 states, including the district of columbia. basically, they enhance drug charges if you are caught with drugs near a school. they also include things like libraries, parks, rec centers. the size of them -- they have a fairly large size. in tennessee, the size around schools is 1000 feet, which is about three city blocks from any

school property or library. the reason tennessee is looking at reforming this is because a lot of criminal justice advocates and community activists say these laws are overzealously applied and result in very long drug sentences and disproportionately impact minorities. host: and your title is "the myth of the playground pusher." is that really a myth? guest: the reason these school zone laws came about is, if you grew up in the 1980's or lived around that time, you have this image in your head -- you can all see this. the image of a shifty guy in a trenchcoat handing a kid a bag of dope through a playground fence. that was the impetus of this law. we need to get drugs only from our kids and we will ratchet up

the penalties. the problem is that, as far as we can tell -- we asked several former and current prosecutors, looked at a lot of cases, and the people getting prosecuted for these laws are almost never actually dealing drugs to minors. there was a survey done by the massachusetts assistant attorney general in the 2000's. he looked at a year's worth of drug cases and found exactly one instance of a drug deal to a minor, and it occurred in an apartment at night, not actually at a school. so there are not actually a lot of drug dealers hanging out around schools. what these laws have actually done, our investigation found, is they tend to blanket whole areas in these drug-free school zones. they result in very long drug sentences for first-time offenders, and they do, indeed, have a disproportionate impact on minority communities, because

these zones tend to cluster in low income minority neighborhoods because of the proximity of public schools and public housing and libraries. host: we are joined by c.j. ciaramella of "reason" magazine talking about his piece. we have regional lines for this conversation. in the eastern or central time zones, call (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zone, call (202) 748-8001. you mentioned tennessee. you took a look at tennessee. i want to read an excerpt from your article on that. "on july 9, 2008, officers of the columbia, tennessee police department arrested michael goodrum and charged him with possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute in a drug-free school zone. but michael goodrum was not peddling dope to kids on a playground. he was not on school property.

school was not in session. in fact, he was not in sight of a school." talk about how the prosecution under these school zone laws can take place even when they are not on property of schools? guest: tennessee decided that these laws apply day or night whether school is not in session or not, during summer, in private residences. even if you are just driving through, you can be pulled over for a traffic stop and if you have drugs on u.n. and happen to be within 1000 feet of these areas, you can receive an enhanced sentence. and in tennessee, that can be the difference between three years with possible probation or eight years, mandatory minimum. in extreme cases, you can get up to 15 years mandatory minimum sentence, which is the same felony level as second-degree murder or rape.

and you have the chance of early release, about 85% of time served with those crimes, but not with the school zone offense. so it is possible you serve more time in prison as a first time nonviolent drug offense than a rapist in tennessee. host: are there laws in other places of the country that impose penalties that steep as the ones you are talking about in tennessee or where these drug-free zone laws are used as frequently to prosecute crimes? guest: they exist in all 50 states. tennessee has among the harshest penalties, but these are frequent throughout the country. the size varies. alabama actually has three mile wide school zone laws. so those are the largest. the smallest one goes down to about 100 feet. they are more commonly seen between 1000 and 500. several states have performed

their laws to shrink the zones down. massachusetts got it down to about 300. utah brought it down to 100. indiana, under governor mike pence, shrunk theirs to about 500 feet. host: steve is calling from maryland. caller: how are you? guest: good. caller: we completed some work at the booker t. washington middle school in baltimore, maryland. while we were there, these middle schools would walk up and they would be smoking marijuana. the security guard was witnessed smoking dope with these children, right in front of the school, the school entry. i do not have a comment about the school laws, but these children have a hard enough time going to make it anyway, and

smoking dope right in front of the school is certainly not going to enhance their chances to be successful members of society. guest: well, i agree. i do not think anyone is arguing that doing drugs on school grounds should not be prosecuted. what advocates are saying is that the zones are too wide and the penalties apply in far too many cases that there should be normal or mitigated circumstances. like i said, these cases are exceedingly rare, yet these laws wrapped up an enormous amount of criminal offenders and slapped them with higher charges. the review i cited earlier said that 80% of drug cases in school zones almost never involved minors.

i think that's the real disconnect here. host: we have a call from west palm beach, florida. caller: good morning. i think your story is a little lame. i think you are nitpicking. i am listening carefully and you are admitting these are rare cases. the thing that gets me is when anyone gets on there and say "disproportinately" this or that, come on. who is committing the crimes? if i go into a white neighborhood, i will arrest disproportionately white people. we have to get away from this terminology because the language is so slanted. you can tweak these laws so that if someone is selling drugs within a three mile radius to not a student, then tweak the laws to make it a criminal

offense if you sell to a student. thank you. guest: sure. i mean i can give the exact , stats. tennessee is about 17% black, but blacks make up about 69% of the people in tennessee prisons serving sentences for drug-free school zone offenses. there is something very definite happening here. the reason i think is if you , live in a middle-class suburb or rich neighborhood, you are farther away from a school or public service like that and are not caught in these overlapping drug zones. that is what is happening. knoxville is about 38% covered by drug-free school zones, but east knoxville, which was a historically segregated portion, is 58% covered. that is what i am talking about. host: i want to read another excerpt from your piece, which gets to the history -- congress created the first drug-free zone law in 1970 as part of the

federal comprehensive drug abuse prevention and control act. at this time, supporters argue aruged that the laws deterred drug sales to children and reduced other criminal activity associated with drugs in or around schools. what have we learned since then and has congress acted since then to change these laws? guest: i believe they are still in effect at the federal level. like i said, a lot of these states are starting to roll these back. utah used to have very strong drug-free school zone laws. they covered about 10% of the state and included things like movie theaters and arcades. washington state included bus stops. they found one that included bus -- that when they included bus stops, it basically covered everywhere in a drug-free school zone. since then, they have removed some of that designation, because they saw the effect this was having. if you look at a map of this, it basically blankets entire towns. i talked to an aclu guy, and he

said the only place not covered in new haven, connecticut was the yale golf course. host: darnell is calling from montana. good morning. caller: i am calling from st. louis. host: sorry. go ahead. caller: good morning. i wanted to ask your guest, in his research, has he been able to find that, until recently -- back in the 1970's and 1980's, there has been an epidemic in city neighborhoods where a lot of these guys that got caught up in these drug laws were actually addicts seeking treatment but were denied treatment. and they were just sent out to prison with 10 and 20 year sentences under this school law zone thing, where actually they were at home when they were caught, never near a school.

also, has he had a chance to look, in his research, concerning this opioid crisis that has come up. and all of a sudden, since it is affecting white people, they want to create laws and are giving them treatment and giving them probation, every other thing they can give them before they go to prison. you see what i'm saying? can he comment on that? host: let's give him a chance to comment. guest: some states have actually expanded their drug-free school zone laws to include opioid offenses. so you are seeing a response to that, in some ways. but not a lot of states. it has not really caught on. but we did find evidence of police using addicts as informants and paying them to set up drug deals, where they would then charge the people with school zone offenses. there was one case that sticks out to me, where a 20-year-old

kid sold a bag of psychedelic mushrooms to a police informant, who was making about $100 for every arrest she contributed to at a gas station at night. it turned out he was within 500 feet of the school, and he received a 15 year mandatory minimum sentence, and he had no prior criminal history. that is how these laws sort of work on a daily basis in tennessee. host: kevin is calling from oklahoma. good morning. caller: good morning. really, what we need to do is to incarcerate those that we are afraid of, not those we are mad at, vis-a-vis the drug laws. your comment on that? guest: well, i think what i

would say is that, in a lot of these cases, maybe the best response is not sending somebody to jail for these enormous amount of years. objectively looking at this, it is hard to say what the benefit is for sending somebody to jail for over a decade for a first offense. a lot of these are crack cocaine or powdered cocaine offenses and they are often not dealers. you have to think of the public andth response to these what we are doing to these people when they get out. and you have to imagine, like in the other case of the 20-year-old kid going to jail for 15 years, what is his life experience and skills going to be when he gets out at 35 with the life experience of a 20-year-old, after spending 15 years of hard time in state prison? those are things we have to consider with how these laws are applied. host: what do you see in terms

of reforms being put in place by people who are troubled by how these laws are being enforced? are we seeing much in the state or local level? guest: the american legislative exchange council, a conservative group, passed a resolution urging states to reform their drug-free schools own laws. you are seeing a big bipartisan coalition among conservative and liberal and criminal justice groups to look at these and say do we really need these zones to , be so big? you see a lot of community activism around this issue in tennessee, because there are a lot of affected families. there is momentum to change these laws. several states have. host: how does the federal response play into all this? you have reported how the attorney general, jeff sessions, ordered federal prosecutors to

charge the highest possible drug sentence possible or boosting enforcement of drug prosecutions. how does that play in to this? guest: it is more of a mindset. the memo was more a shift in attitude. we do not see -- a lot of these sort of school zone and low level cases are state and local. they are not being prosecuted by the feds. so that sort of tough on crime mentality has an effect on how prosecutors do their job. a lot of prosecutors go out and want to get the toughest possible sentence. that is why they charge a school zone offense during a traffic stop, because they have leverage and a plea deal. it gives them enormous leverage over defendants where they can threaten them with a 15 year mandatory minimum sentence. the national district attorney actually ran on a platform of

not charging school zone offenses where there were not children involved. he actually saw these laws and said wait, this is not really how these laws are supposed to work, and i am not going to use these to prosecute people. host: mary is calling from california. good morning. caller: good morning. i have been a substitute teacher for decades. every friday, you could smell the marijuana wafting from the bathrooms. it does not matter where they get it. they get it. it could be at home. it could be two miles away. for people to be losing their whole lives going to jail for 20, 15 years, whatever, it is a tragedy. they get out and have no jobs. they are homeless. they have nothing they can do with their lives. they are just creating criminals, creating homeless people with no life -- for what? we live in a place where you can

pick something up two miles away, bring it into a school, and there is nothing you can do about it. host: what is your reaction? guest: you have to ask yourself, in the case of actual minors, do you want to send them to prison for a mandatory minimum sentence. the youngest tennessee inmate we found was charged at age 16 and received an eight year mandatory minimum sentence. another case, we found a guy selling cocaine out of his apartment and received a 15 year mandatory minimum, and he has missed almost his son's entire childhood, from kindergarten through college move in day. that is the human cost of these laws. host: c.j. ciaramella -- i will get it right before the end of the segment -- thank you for joining us to talk about this

article as part of our spotlight on magazine series. you also formerly worked at buzzfeed and the "washington free beacon." has there been any pushback? folks who say these laws are important, or make efforts to expand them? guest: they are popular among conservative law and order state legislatures and among prosecutors. because they give prosecutors immense leverage over defendants. so prosecutors really like these laws. when people try to roll them back, they tend to face the very predictable but effective retort which is look at state , legislator so-and-so here who wants to make it easier for people to sell drugs to kids. and that response has scuttled several reform efforts. there is a bipartisan growing group among republicans who sort of see the problem with this, so you are starting to see more momentum.

but it has been a little tough to get more of the law and order conservatives on board with this. that is what killed the bill in tennessee last year. host: mary is calling from martinsville, virginia. caller: i do think these laws are an effective tool in the toolbox for law enforcement or whomever. i saw where a city park, paid for by taxes, but was next door to a school -- it became just a drug land. and because they were run from 1/6th of the town and moved to the park, the people that ran -- one section of the town and moved to the park, and it

affected what the park was built for. and i had to pay for it. so i think they are effective. host: what is your reaction? guest: i think if they were effective, you would see some actual difference in drug activity inside and outside the zone, but when you look at what actually happens, you do not. in a lot of cases, that is because these zones are not clearly marked. there is no sign outside that says "you are now entering a drug-free zone." they have that around schools in some places, but if you want to make these laws more effective, one way to do is put clearly marked signs, let people know -- now, you are entering a drug-free zone. if you commit an offense, you will get a very hefty time in prison. that is what a lot of advocates also say. that these zones need to be more clearly marked. in a lot of cases, when these zones overlap and create these sort of super zones, people do not even know they are in them, because the entire neighborhood is a drug-free zone.

that goes to the heart of the problem. is that if an entire neighborhood is a drug-free school zone, it has no particular deterrent effect. host: linda is calling from greensboro, north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? guest: doing great. caller: i like what you are talking, and you make a lot of sense, but my question is, as an advocate and a person who wants to help the change going about -- i know that the constitution says that when a person is locked up, they are not a slave, any color. when we are incarcerating people for an excessive number of years, aged 14 and 12 to 20, like you say, we are destroying a whole generation of people. so how do we go about getting congress to change these laws and these rules that have been

in effect so long? personally, i think the constitution is outdated, and the judges they are putting in have been so political lives, we -- politicized, we are just losing people. i do not care what color they are. guest: the judges' hands are sort of tied in these cases because of the mandatory minimums. it is really incumbent on legislatures to reform these laws if they want to change anything. the prosecutors use the tools they have, and in a lot of ways, you cannot blame them. police charge people, police arrest and charge people based on what they find. it is a legislature that makes these laws and the legislature that needs to change them. we are seeing more awareness around this issue because of what you were saying, which is the families that have been affected. there are a lot of families in tennessee spending every day

emailing their state legislatures, saying my son or husband, who has been locked up all this time, for a nonviolent drug offense because of the laws you passed -- that is why we are starting to see this movement to roll back some of these laws. host: jackie is calling from arlington, virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: good morning. how are you guys doing? guest: very good. host: what is your question? caller: my question is this -- the gentleman cited blacks as disproportionately affected by drugs and drug use, so how do you get your data? cdc data said, from 2006 to 2016, said drug use is higher among whites.

does that include -- when you say "disproportionately among blacks" -- host: c.j. was talking about prosecutions. guest: you are correct. drug use is fairly equivalent among races. the disproportionate part is who is getting sentenced under these laws. we found out blacks in tennessee were widely overrepresented in these prison sentences and, on average, receive longer sentences. that is the actual imbalance. like i said, part of that has to do with what neighborhoods are getting covered in these zones and the proximities of schools and things like that. what the nashville district attorney told me was, when we passed these laws, we unintentionally made drug

offenses the same level as murder. that is sort of what happened. they blanketed these towns in enhanced sentencing zones. and we have seen this disparate impact. host: john is calling from wisconsin. just a few seconds left -- what is your question? caller: based upon what i could see, most of the people that will dabble in drugs, either selling it or buying it, they have no information about how it affects them or someone else. you never see any advertising on television concerning any of that stuff. that is my question. guest: yeah, i think the opioid crisis, for whatever reason, -- well, it is bad, but we see more public awareness around addiction and things like that in recent years. we are starting to get sort of a more public health response,

although there has also been a more carceral response to the opioid crisis, where we are seeing states pass things like making opioid dealer subject to felony murder laws if someone overdoses. there is both the public health response and a more carceral response. host: c.j. ciaramella, you can find his work at reason.com and find him on twitter at @cjciaramella. thank you so much for joining us. >> washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. sunday morning, health cuts and military funding affect readiness, with decoder woods of the-- dakota woods of heritage foundation and the future of daca with ezra

levin. and john auerbach will discuss how the short-term government funding bills are impacting what health agencies. be sure to watch washington journal, live at 7:00 eastern, sunday morning. join the discussion. >> the president of the united states. [applause] >> tuesday night, president donald trump gives his first state of the union address to congress on the nation. join us on c-span for a preview of the evening, starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern. then the state of the union speech, live at 9:00 p.m.. following the speech, the democratic response from congressman joe kennedy. we also hear your reaction and comments from members of congress. president trump's state of the union address, tuesday night live on c-span. listen live on the free c-span radio app, and live or on-demand on your desktop, phone or tablet at www.c-span.org. >> congress has a short work week coming up.

in session monday and tuesday than out for the rest of the week. as republicans from both chambers hold a legislative retreat. house members plan to consider several bills, including one to increase protections for young people and amateur athletes against sexual abuse. the senate will take up a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks with some exceptions. c-span spoke with politico's appropriations and budget reporter to discuss budget talks ahead of the february 8 government funding deadline. >> sarah faris, appropriations and budget reporter for "politico." now that congress bought themselves a little more time, what is the status on capitol hill of immigration and daca talks >>? >> next week is supposed to be the opening salvo of the white house's immigration bid. the white house is supposed to be having meetings with congressional negotiators to try and move these dreamers and daca s