Pubdate: Mon, 28 Jul 2014
Source: Philadelphia Daily News (PA)
Copyright: 2014 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
Contact: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/about/feedback/
Website: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/339
Page: 17

TIME FOR A TRUCE

As the War on Drugs Ebbs, So, Too, Should the War on Nonviolent
Offenders

THE NATION'S retreat from a maniacal and misguided mission to arrest
and imprison our way out of our illegal drug problem has taken another
important step.

A federal commission has voted to allow federal inmates serving time
on nonviolent drug charges under harsh mandatory-minimum guidelines to
petition the courts to reduce their sentences. As many as 46,000
federal felons, some of whom already have spent substantial time in
prison, could have their sentences reduced by an average of two years.

It's estimated that half the inmates in federal prison are doing time
for drug charges, and half of those are nonviolent offenders.
Pennsylvania has about 12,100 inmates, hundreds if not thousands of
whom could be eligible for reduced sentences. For some, if not all,
justice will finally be served.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to reduce the
mandatory-minimum drug-sentencing guidelines for nonviolent drug
offenses. After much debate and the initial resistance of U.S.
Attorney Eric Holder, it voted unanimously on July 17 to apply the new
guidelines retroactively to inmates who are behind bars.

What a cruel irony it would have been to "fix the problem of
over-sentencing only to deny relief to the thousands who have suffered
its consequences," one advocacy group declared.

The prisoner releases will be delayed a year, until November 2015, to
allow prosecutors and judges time to consider whether an eligible
inmate is a legitimate candidate for release or could potentially
create a public risk.

The Sentencing Commission's decision will have a profound impact, not
only on the individuals who were sacrificed to a failed and
discriminatory war on drugs, but to the federal prison system, which
will save billions of taxpayer dollars and reduce the overcrowding
that prison officials predict could potentially explode into violence.

The commission's decision is another harbinger that the era of
sentencing insanity regarding drug violations is ending.

The crack epidemic of the 1980s unleashed a morally righteous and
immorally executed crusade that swelled the prisons with drug
offenders of every stripe, including those in possession of
inconsequential amounts of marijuana - something that's now legal in
certain parts of the country.

(It's impossible not to note here that yesterday's New York Times
began an editorial campaign on the front page of its Sunday Review
section urging the federal government to repeal the ban on marijuana
altogether.)

The ineffective war on drugs not only bloated the nation's prisons, it
also resulted in what has been called the new Jim Crow. Although
whites and blacks use drugs at about the same rate, blacks are
arrested and imprisoned at wildly disproportionate rates, in part
because of policing tactics such as "stop and frisk" that focus on
inner-city residents.

The racial distortion was starkly evident in the disparity between the
sentences for possession of crack, mostly imposed on
African-Americans, and cocaine, the identical substance in a different
form used more frequently by whites. The Sentencing Commission
substantially mitigated, but didn't eliminate, the disparity in 2011.
It also made that decision retroactive.

Clearly and thankfully, the national hysteria has dramatically ebbed.
The trend in public policy is toward a fairer application of justice.
It's uneven, of course, and has a distance to go.

But in a chaotic world in which sanity seems hard to come by, every
little bit counts. Every step forward should be noted.

We applaud the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
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