Pubdate: Fri, 30 Apr 2004
Source: Record, The (Hackensack, NJ)
Copyright: 2004 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.bergen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/44
Author: Lawrence Aaron
Cited: Families Against Mandatory Minimums ( www.famm.org )
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?214 (Drug Policy Alliance)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)

OVERHAULING NEW JERSEY'S SENTENCING LAWS

For a group of 12 adults meeting with Families Against Mandatory
Minimums, loosening the New Jersey prison system's hold on the black
and Hispanic communities was the most important way they could spend a
recent Saturday.

The work of this group is so urgent that one woman says her boyfriend
in prison will just have to understand why she can't visit him this
one Saturday. So much more is at stake - his freedom and the freedom
of tens of thousands of others caught up in the prison system.

Another woman is worried about her 25-year-old son, newly jailed in
East Jersey State Prison in Rahway for a drug-related offense. After
he serves a long sentence, a hopeless situation could send him back,
she fears. Freedom could be disastrous for him: He has no driver's
license, no job prospects, no place to live. She said many people will
look at him as an employment risk even though he has been to college.
And there's another problem, she said. Although he's in prison, his
college loans are accruing penalties and interest, so he'll also be
faced with massive bills.

Getting Trenton to reform mandatory sentencing laws is one way to put
an end to the stringent penalties that were adopted in the 1980s to
stop the proliferation of drug-related crimes. The overly punitive
drug laws - five years for a minuscule five grams of crack, 10 years
for two ounces, and up to life in prison for repeat offenders - have
not been very effective against the high-level drug dealers. But the
laws sure have caught people who would have been better off with drug
treatment, job training, education, and other needs not addressed in
prison.

In a little meeting room in a hotel next to Newark Liberty
International Airport, the group spent the morning and afternoon
trying to chip away at problems caused in the community by massive
incarceration of both men and women.

"It's not a coincidence that 66 percent of the prison population is
African-American," said Gale Muhammad, an organizer on the FAMM staff
in New Jersey. "The weakest of the black families have fallen into the
criminal justice system and been captured in this big net. We're not
trying to eliminate prisons in New Jersey, but to put discretion back
in the judges' hands."

FAMM, a national organization started 13 years ago to address the
excessive penalties required by mandatory sentencing laws, has 1,500
members in New Jersey. Several more information workshops scheduled
around the state in May could add more.

Family involvement is an important first step in recognizing
incarceration as a community problem, not just an issue for the
criminal justice establishment. FAMM's approach, educating inmates'
families about the nuts and bolts of working with elected officials,
is ultimately aimed at rewriting the sentencing laws to avoid the
waste of so much human potential in New Jersey prisons.

Some of the decline in the state's prison population over the past few
years comes from diverting non-violent drug offenders to drug courts.
In New Jersey, 36 percent of inmates are incarcerated on drug charges,
which is, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, the highest
proportion of drug offenders in any state.

FAMM is invaluable because it offers expertise to its 35 chapters
nationwide to help people work together to change sentencing laws. New
Jersey's penalty laws are considered among the harshest.

While many activists in criminal justice reform are pinning their
hopes to sentencing reform, the issues that need to be addressed
include after incarceration - rehabilitation, reconciliation with
families, continued substance-abuse counseling and psychological help.
Equally important are restoring the right to vote and building skills
to make ex-offenders employable.

This is a good time to develop strategies for reform. With the recent
creation of a state commission to review crime and punishment in New
Jersey, the tide is definitely turning. At a meeting of the New Jersey
chapter of the American Correctional Association earlier this month,
state Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown talked about the impact of
so much jailing on the African-American and Latino communities - which
he sees directly when he visits schools and asks kids about the adults
in their lives who are incarcerated.

"It's chilling when so many kids raise their hands," said Brown, who
holds degrees in psychology in addition to his law degree.

And he worries about the message that such imprisonment sends:
"[Prison] must be OK if Mommy and Daddy are there."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin