Pubdate: Thu, 26 Dec 2013
Source: Chico News & Review, The (CA)
Copyright: 2013 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsreview.com/chico/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/559
Note: The author, a semiretired real-estate broker, is a longtime
Chico resident and graduate of Chico State.

OUR DESTRUCTIVE FEDERAL PRISON SYSTEM

We Must Demand It Be Used Only for Select Serious Crimes

It is time that our population-especially our young and educated-rise
up against the entire federal prison system and demand that it be used
only for a very few and select type of crimes, such as international
terrorism, and that it otherwise be completely dismantled.

The federal prison system houses 200,000 inmates, more than half of
whom are imprisoned for drug offenses. We have young folks who are no
danger to society rotting away in those prisons for selling small
amounts of marijuana and other drugs, which accomplishes nothing but
paying the salaries of nearly 50,000 prison guards, who happen to have
the second-largest political-action committee in the U.S. Furthermore,
nearly 40 percent of these prisoners in this highly racist system are
black Americans.

We need to abolish the mandatory sentences, which were bought and paid
for by the prison guards and the police industry, as part of this
dismantling. Nearly every prisoner in this system could have been
prosecuted at the state level.

Let's take the case of Weldon Angelos, who was accused of selling weed
to a "friend." That friend had been threatened by the feds with a long
prison term if he didn't turn in Angelos for selling him a few ounces
of marijuana once in a while. Like most Americans, the
then-23-year-old Angelos-a nationally known music producer who once
worked with Snoop Dog-had a legal gun in his home. He is serving time
until he is 85 years old without the chance of parole at a cost to
taxpayers of $1.5 million.

Angelos has exhausted all of his appeals and his only hope is for the
president to commute his sentence. His marriage to his high-school
sweetheart has been destroyed and his two sons are growing up
fatherless. This could be your son, dad, daughter or best friend.

As part of this process, we need to demand that citizen-review panels
be set up immediately to review every sentence handed down, so that
cruel and unusual sentences such as Angelos' be commuted immediately.
He has already served 11 years, and is a decent human being we would
all enjoy as a neighbor.

I am older than 60 years old, not great at social media, and I don't
have the energy of our college-age youth. My hope is that, by reading
this letter, someone will take on this abusive prison system by
rallying the masses and demanding fairness.  
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D