Pubdate: Wed, 15 Aug 2001
Source: Times Record News (TX)
Copyright: 2001 The E.W. Scripps Co.
Contact:  http://www.trnonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/995

FAIR SHAKE REPORT: MINORITIES HARDEST HIT BY MANDATORY SENTENCING

Weekend reports indicate that the U.S. prison population, led by the state 
of Texas, is down somewhat this year compared to last year.

That small decline comes after years of explosive growth in the nation's 
prison population and prison numbers.

That's been very expensive growth, incidentally, because prisons are not 
exactly cheap or easy to run.

The growth has come about mainly because state legislatures and Congress 
decided to pre-empt the courts and juries and set mandatory sentence 
lengths for specific crimes. Our lawmakers decided the folks on the front 
lines weren't tough enough on crime. (Or was it simply that talking and 
acting tough on crime was a fashionable way to get elected or re-elected?)

Now, advocates of mandatory sentencing, the poster child of the nation's 
very expensive drug war, are backing off, according to reports in the Wall 
Street Journal among other publications.

Even President Bush is said to be having second thoughts about mandatory 
sentences, and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration has likewise 
gone on record wondering aloud whether they are worth what they cost. And 
the U.S. Sentencing Commission is also planning to look at some of its 
guidelines, perhaps to relax them.

What's going on here?

Well, it would be cynical to suggest that the price of incarceration has 
just gotten too high to handle. Besides, that would probably be the wrong 
thing to say because there seems to be no ceiling at all on what we'll 
spend to put people behind bars as opposed to, say, getting them educated.

No, it may actually be the case that a sense of fairness has come into play 
here. When you look at who is behind bars and who isn't and who gets the 
hard time and who doesn't, you see that it's minorities who are hardest hit 
by mandatory sentences.

That's been especially true with sentences for offenses involving cocaine. 
As The Journal pointed out last week in a piece by Gary Fields, the 
sentences for crimes involving crack are tougher than those for powder 
cocaine. And those incarcerated for crack offenses are more likely to be 
minorities.

What the federal government does about mandatory sentencing makes a 
difference to the states because the feds tend to set the tone in such matters.

But it's the states where most of the money is spent on keeping people in 
prison at huge expense, and it's in the states where the debate over 
sentencing has to take place if it's to have much effect on taxpayers and 
on those accused of crimes -- and those who might use the money if it 
weren't tied up in bars and guards.
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