Pubdate: Tue, 13 Aug 2013
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Authors: Charlie Savage and Erica Goode, The New York Times

BIG SHIFT IN CRIMINAL-JUSTICE THINKING

WASHINGTON - Two decisions Monday, one by a federal judge in New York 
and the other by Attorney General Eric Holder, were powerful signals 
that the pendulum has swung away from the tough-on-crime policies of 
a generation ago. Those policies have been denounced as 
discriminatory and responsible for explosive growth in the prison population.

Critics have long contended that draconian mandatory minimum-sentence 
laws for low-level drug offenses, as well as stop-and-frisk police 
policies that target higher-crime and minority neighborhoods, have a 
disproportionate impact on minorities. On Monday, Holder announced 
that federal prosecutors would no longer invoke the sentencing laws, 
and a judge found that stop-and-frisk practices in New York were 
unconstitutional racial profiling.

While the timing was a coincidence, Barbara Arnwine, the president of 
the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the effect was 
"historic, groundbreaking, and potentially game-changing."

"I thought that the most important significance of both events was 
the sense of enough is enough," said Arnwine, who attended the speech 
in San Francisco where Holder unveiled the new Justice Department 
policy. "It's a feeling that this is the moment to make needed 
change. This just can't continue, this level of extreme heightened 
injustice in our policing, our law enforcement and our 
criminal-justice system."

A generation ago, amid a crack epidemic, state and federal lawmakers 
enacted a wave of tough-on-crime measures that resulted in an 800 
percent increase in the number of prisoners in the United States, 
even as the population grew by only a third. The spike centered on an 
increase in black and Hispanic men convicted of drug crimes; blacks 
are about six times as likely as whites to be incarcerated.

But the crack wave has long since passed and violent-crime rates have 
plummeted to four-decade lows.

Against that backdrop, the move away from mandatory sentences and 
Judge Shira Scheindlin's ruling on stop-and-frisk practices signaled 
a course correction on two big criminal-justice issues that 
disproportionately affect minorities has finally been made, according 
to the advocates who have pushed for those changes.

Scheindlin wrote in her ruling that the nation's largest police 
department illegally and systematically singled out large numbers of 
blacks and Hispanics under its stop-and-frisk policy. She appointed 
an independent monitor to oversee major changes, including body 
cameras on some officers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would appeal the ruling, which was a 
stinging rebuke to a policy he and the New York Police Department 
have defended as a tool that helped lead the city to historic crime 
lows. The legal outcome could affect how and whether other cities 
employ the tactic.

Stop-and-frisk has been around for decades in some form, but recorded 
stops increased dramatically under the Bloomberg administration to an 
all-time high in 2011 of 684,330, mostly of black and Hispanic men. 
The lawsuit was filed in 2004 by four men, all minorities, and became 
a class-action case.

Michelle Alexander, an Ohio State University law professor who wrote 
"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," 
an influential 2010 book about the racial impact of policies like 
stop-and-frisk and mandatory minimum drug sentences, said the two 
developments gave her a sense of "cautious optimism."

But not everyone was celebrating. William G. Otis, a former federal 
prosecutor, described Holder's move as a victory for drug dealers 
that would incentivize greater sales of addictive contraband, and he 
suggested the stop-and-frisk ruling could be overturned on appeal.

Otis also warned that society was becoming "complacent" and 
forgetting that the drug and sentencing policies enacted over the 
past three decades had contributed to the falling crime rates.

Yet Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research 
Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based research group, said many police 
chiefs agreed it was time to rethink mandatory sentencing for 
low-level drug offenses.

And he said departments across the country would examine the ruling 
in New York "to see if their practices pass muster."

But Wexler added: "You can't get away from the fact that in most 
large cities, crime is concentrated in poor areas which are 
predominantly minority. The question becomes, what tactics are 
acceptable in those communities to reduce crime? And there is a 
trade-off between the tactics that may be used and the issue of fairness."

Critics have argued that aggressive policing in minority 
neighborhoods can distort overall crime statistics.

Federal data show, for example, that black Americans were nearly four 
times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana 
possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom