Pubdate: Mon, 10 Mar 2008
Source: Louisiana Weekly, The (New Orleans, LA)
Copyright: 2008 Louisiana Weekly Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.louisianaweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3627
Author: Ron Walters, NNPA Columnist
Note:
Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership  Scholar, Director of
the African American Leadership  Center and Professor of Government
and Politics at the  University of Maryland College Park.

NOW IS THE TIME TO LIBERATE BLACKS FROM PRISONS

A new study by the Pew Center has just confirmed  something we have
known for quite a while. The United  States went on an incarceration
binge in the first Bush  and Clinton administrations that now finds
America  holding one-quarter of all the prisoners in the world.  It
says that one of every 100 Americans is in jail,  while one in every
nine Blacks are there, with one of  15 Blacks between the ages of 18-39.

Whether it is that America is embarrassed or, in the  case of some
politicians, see that the "tough on crime"  era did not amount to
crime reduction, or financial  savings, or added safety, this approach
to the drug  epidemic did not work. And while 66 percent of crack
cocaine users are White, policing drugs led to policing  blacks,
resulting in the fact that 80 percent of those  locked up are for
petting drug offenses.

Now it seems that there is a developing mood in the  Congress among
both Democrats and Republicans that  something should be done. Rep.
Bobby Scott (VA) has  introduced HR 5035, a bill that is supported by
the  NAACP and other groups to reduce the sentences for  possession of
crack cocaine.

The bill would eliminate the added penalties for  cocaine base use,
eliminate the mandatory minimum  sentence associated with it and use
the savings for  drug treatment and counseling. Scott recently held
hearings that featured an array of people, from a black  former drug
dealer, a judge, an NIH official, a state  official and others who all
agreed that the disparities  in cocaine sentencing together with
mandatory minimums  has failed.

As I listened to the hearings, I remembered the era of  the late 1980s
and early 1990s, when each and every  politician running for office
was obliged to show that  he or she could be tougher on crime than the
other  person.

In fact, what transpired before our eyes was a  discussion about race,
justifying the long sentences  given blacks, suggesting that since
crack cocaine  fostered violence in their neighborhoods severe
punishment would cure the problem.

Now, more than one million imprisoned Americans later,  we know that
not only has it not worked, it has created  bloated state expenditures
on jail construction rather  than schools, leading to the need for
intensified  policing to fill the jails and in the process provide
the cheap labor for prison industries associated with  them.

But I also remember that in 1997, Rep Maxine Waters  called on then
President Bill Clinton to provide $5  billion in construction money
for dilapidated schools  and to ease the drug sentencing guidelines
for power  and crack cocaine.

But while Al Gore advocated equalizing the penalties  before an
organization of black Journalists, the  Trotter Group, Bill Clinton
clung to the belief that  the impact of violence associated with the
drug trade  was a justification for keeping some inequality between
the drugs.

This weak rationale associated with sentencing that was  never fully
vetted, since both drug crack and power  influenced black and white
communities dramatically in  some way.

So, even as Supreme Court justice Stephen Steven Bryer  and other
lower level judges rebelled against the use  of mandatory minimum
sentencing as unfair and racially  biased, and the Sentencing
Commission recommended  equalization to the Clinton administration,
Rep. Waters  received neither the $5 billion, nor the drug
equalization change from Clinton. She had a special  reason of course,
because it was her district that was  flooded by the importation of
crack in the mid-1980s,  as a result of the Reagan administration
inspired  Iran-Contra scandal where the CIA used money from the  drug
sales to finance the war against the Contras in  Nicaragua.

In this election, there is perhaps no greater issue for  the black
community than liberating as many of its  members as possible that
were legislated into prison by  the anti-crime craze of an earlier
era. What makes it  appear to have been an action taken against the
black  community is fact that an FBI report in 1998 indicated  that
serious crime had been declined for the 7the  consecutive year.

Now in the early 21st Century, the jury is still out  why the Clinton
administration, aware of the disparate  racial impact his 1994 Crime
Control act and targeting  policing were having upon blacks who were
incarcerated,  their families and their future, could hold the
position that the black community suffered more from  the violence
associated with the crack cocaine trade.

Nevertheless, it raises the question now of the  judgment has been
exercised by Hillary and Barack Obama  on the decision to equalize
drug sentencing and  eliminate Mandatory Minimums. This decision could
also  save lives and since there are more Blacks in prison  than in
Iraq, it is also more important.

Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership  Scholar, Director of
the African American Leadership  Center and Professor of Government
and Politics at the  University of Maryland College Park.
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MAP posted-by: Derek