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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYT editorial: Sentencing Reform Starts to Pay Off
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the vast disparity in the way the federal courts punish crack versus powder cocaine offenses. Instead of treating 100 grams of cocaine the same as 1 gram of crack for sentencing purposes, the law cut the ratio to 18 to 1. Initially, the law applied only to future offenders, but, a year later, the United States Sentencing Commission voted to apply it retroactively. Republicans raged, charging that crime would go up and that prisoners would overwhelm the courts with frivolous demands for sentence reductions. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa said the commission was pursuing a liberal agenda at all costs.
This week, we began to learn that there are no costs, only benefits. According to a preliminary report released by the commission, more than 7,300 federal prisoners have had their sentences shortened under the law. The average reduction is 29 months, meaning that over all, offenders are serving roughly 16,000 years fewer than they otherwise would have. And since the federal government spends about $30,000 per year to house an inmate, this reduction alone is worth nearly half-a-billion dollars big money for a Bureau of Prisons with a $7 billion budget. In addition, the commission found no significant difference in recidivism rates between those prisoners who were released early and those who served their full sentences.
Federal judges nationwide have long expressed vigorous disagreement with both the sentencing disparity and the mandatory minimum sentences they are forced to impose, both of which have been drivers of our bloated federal prison system. But two bipartisan bills in Congress now propose a cheaper and more humane approach. It would include reducing mandatory minimums, giving judges more flexibility to sentence below those minimums, and making more inmates eligible for reductions to their sentences under the new ratio.
But 18 to 1 is still out of whack. The ratio was always based on faulty science and misguided assumptions, and it still disproportionately punishes blacks, who make up more than 80 percent of those prosecuted for federal crack offenses. The commission and the Obama administration have called for a 1-to-1 ratio. The question is not whether we can afford to do it, but whether we can afford not to.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/opinion/sentencing-reform-starts-to-pay-off.html
Washington Gives Us Something to Get Excited About (No, Really!)
http://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/washington-gives-us-something-get-excited-about-no-really
Background.
By Laura W. Murphy
June 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs" a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of or demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world's largest incarcerator. Throughout the month, check back daily for posts about the drug war, its victims and what needs to be done to restore fairness and create effective policy.
Today is an exciting day for the ACLU and criminal justice advocates around the country. Following much thought and careful deliberation, the United States Sentencing Commission took another step toward creating fairness in federal sentencing by retroactively applying the new Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) guidelines to individuals sentenced before the law was enacted. This decision will help ensure that over 12,000 people 85 percent of whom are African-Americans will have the opportunity to have their sentences for crack cocaine offenses reviewed by a federal judge and possibly reduced.
This decision is particularly important to me because, as director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, I have advocated for Congress and the sentencing commission to reform federal crack cocaine laws for almost 20 years. In 1993, the ACLU lead the coalition that convened the first national symposium highlighting the crack cocaine disparity entitled "The 100 to 1 Ratio: Racial Bias in Cocaine Laws." Now, 25 years after the first crack cocaine law was enacted in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the sentencing commission has taken another step toward ending the racial and sentencing disparities that continue to exist in our criminal justice system.
By voting in favor of retroactivity, I am pleased that the commission chose justice over demagoguery and concluded that retroactivity was necessary to ensuring that the goals of the FSA were fully realized. It is important to remember that even with today's commission vote not every crack cocaine offender will have his or her sentence reduced. Judges are still required to determine whether a person qualifies for a retroactive reduction so, contrary to what some have said, this is not a "get out of jail free card."
- more -
http://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/justice-served
Chance at Freedom: Retroactive Crack Sentence Reductions For Up to 12,000 May Begin Today
http://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/chance-freedom-retroactive-crack-sentence-reductions-12000-may-begin-today
ProSense
(116,464 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)Logical
(22,457 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)Thanks for kicking the thread.
Logical
(22,457 posts)link to it. Most people DO NOT kick their own posts. They do not need attention.
"After two kicks give it up. No one is interested. Search for some other news story and post a....
link to it. Most people DO NOT kick their own posts. They do not need attention."
...remember this thread and your obession?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023381665
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023381665#post3
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023381665#post7
Logical
(22,457 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)Do you seriously not see that freaking out about someone kicking a thread is creepy?
Logical
(22,457 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)"Freaking out is calling you out on it? LOL....then what do you call your obsession about Snowden?"
...you're actually going through the same panic as the last time you did this.
Snowden is in the news, the leak, the NSA, his flight from the country, his attempt to get asylum are all being discussed.
If you can't see why anyone would focus on him, that's your problem.
If you can't see the creepiness in focusing on me and panicking because I kicked the thread, that's also your problem.
I'm not a topic here anymore than you are. It's weird and obsessive.
Logical
(22,457 posts)I respond maybe 2 or three times a week. Once again. over rating your importance.
You are not the center of anyone's attention.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)Thanks again.
great white snark
(2,646 posts)ProSense is much appreciated so get over it.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)Yikes!
I'm thinking of a word, first letter "O"
[font size=21pt]BSESSION![/font]
What a creepy stalker you have, PS.. sorry about that
Skraxx
(2,967 posts)Cha
(296,796 posts)DU's ProSense.
Sorry, you're nothing but a stalker.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)Thanks.
Kick!
Cha
(296,796 posts)thanks for trying to get peeps to see it. I might have missed it had you not KICKED IT!
Don't ever stop! Just because one person wants to stifle the news by trying to intimidate the messenger.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)kick!
madokie
(51,076 posts)Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)Raine1967
(11,589 posts)This is great news! 18-1 is still sorely out of whack, but this is indeed a very good start.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Holder Moves to Overturn Ruling That Would Apply Fair Sentencing Act Retroactively
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/trial-obama-admins-greatest-shame?page=0%2C1
Strangely, the Obama administration initially urged in federal courts across the country that the old discriminatory penalties should still be applied to those arrested but not yet sentenced at the time the law was passed. However, the administration reversed course after significant criticism, and the US supreme court held last year that the new, more "fair" sentences must be applied to those not yet sentenced.
But that case did not decide the fate of any of the thousands of people already sitting in prison because of what all agree is an unfair law. For those people sentenced, in some cases, just days or weeks before the Fair Sentencing Act was signed our society's acknowledgment that they remain in prison for no good reason may not help them at all because the government did not care to reduce their penalties retroactively when it declared them unjust.
For several years, federal judges have done nothing to remedy this injustice; one famously concluded that the prisoners sentenced under the old law had simply "lost on a temporal roll of the cosmic dice". So, there are American citizens serving tens of thousands of years in prison because, according to all three branches of government, it's just their tough luck?
Apparently so, until two months ago. On 17 May 2013, the US court of appeals for the sixth circuit held that the new, "fair" sentences must be applied to all those previously sentenced under laws that everyone acknowledges were discriminatory. The two-judge majority opinion wrote forcefully (pdf) and with unusual candor about the history of unequal treatment under the old laws. The judges ordered that those sentenced under those laws were entitled to ask federal judges to reduce their sentences.
The Justice Department is now seeking to overturn that decision which will be devastating news to many thousands like my original crack cocaine client. The Obama administration would surely condemn an oppressive foreign dictator's regime for the singular cruelty of declaring to its population that thousands of its citizens must continue to sit in prison for no good reason. The fact that few have even heard of the stunning position taken by President Obama is a sad reflection on how incurious mainstream US public opinion is about what underpins our mass incarceration society.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)from online streaming, too:
Obama's task force wants to make unauthorized streaming a felony
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014559157
Obama task force revives SOPA provision outlawing online streaming
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3432828
Must keep growing that private prison industry. Hiring a consultant for private prisons as the Director of the US Marshal's Service was an ambitious move, but these projects need constant help...
ProSense
(116,464 posts)Got to make sure no good news gets recognized?
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)How do you feel about making unauthorized streaming a felony? Sounds like a huge, profoundly disturbing gift to the corporations *and* the private prisons. And pretty damned incompatible with "fair sentencing."
Obama's task force wants to make unauthorized streaming a felony
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014559157
Obama task force revives SOPA provision outlawing online streaming
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3432828