Shima Baradaran, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law will publish an article for the forthcoming Southern California Law Review in 2015.
Titled “Drugs and Violence” the article discusses the current war on drugs and debunks the connection between drugs and violence. The premise that drugs and violence are linked has resulted in a tenfold increase in the United States prison population. The abstract summarizes, “The presumed connection between drugs and violence has reduced constitutional protections, misled government resources, and resulted in the unnecessary incarceration of a large proportion of non-violent Americans. In short, if drugs do not cause violence — and the empirical evidence discussed in this Article suggests they do not — then America needs to rethink its entire approach to drug policy.”