Pubdate: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 Source: Ocean County Observer (NJ) Copyright: 2004 Ocean County Observer Contact: http://www.injersey.com/observer/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1212 Author: DeWayne Wickham Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/American+Bar+Association KILL MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES A recent column I wrote about a call from an American Bar Association panel for an overhaul of mandatory minimum-sentencing laws got the attention of a reader who has had his own run-in with the criminal justice system. In that piece, I said "the ABA report offers recommendations that could fix a problem that threatens to turn our democracy into a penal colony." But what I saw as a chilling possibility, Ross Alan Milburn thinks has already come to be. An inmate at the federal prison in Florence, Colo., Milburn complained that he's seen too many young men enter the prison with mandatory-minimum sentences, some of them drawing life without parole for nonviolent drug crimes. "Our democracy has already become a penal colony," he wrote me. Before you dismiss Milburn as just the jailhouse scribe, listen to what else he has to say: "I just wanted to remind you that there are some drug dealers who admit their guilt and deserve harsh punishment," but Milburn says sentencing them to the same time as people like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, serial killer Gary Ridgeway and mass murderer Charles Manson is unfair. He's got a point. For all of the harm that nonviolent drug dealers do, their crimes are hardly comparable to those of Kaczynski, Ridgeway and Manson. Last year in a speech to the ABA, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said "mandatory minimum sentences are unwise and unjust." He urged the legal group to study the matter -- and to press lawmakers to "repeal federal mandatory minimums." "The legislative branch has the obligation to determine whether a policy is wise," Kennedy said. "It is a grave mistake to retain a policy just because a court finds it constitutional. Courts may conclude the legislature is permitted to choose long sentences, but that does not mean long sentences are wise and just. Few misconceptions about government are more mischievous than the idea that a policy is sound simply because a court finds it permissible." In releasing the findings of his group's study last month, ABA President Dennis Archer said: "For more than 20 years, we have gotten tougher on crime. Now we need to get smarter ... The system is broken. We need to fix it." When lawyers from around the country gather next month for the ABA's annual meeting in Atlanta, the body's House of Delegates will be asked to adopt recommendations that call for the repeal of federal and state mandatory minimum-sentencing statutes. That makes sense, given the way the nation's penal institutions have swelled with offenders who got "one-size-fits-all" sentences mandated by legislators, not the judges and juries that heard their cases. "There is a big difference in the criminal mind of a mass murderer and the mind of a man who engages in and conducts an illegal business," Milburn said about nonviolent drug dealers who get mandatory sentences. "The criminal mind of a drug dealer is not much different from that of a Wall Street stockbroker ripping off his clients or a CEO ripping off his company. But they never get sentenced to life with no parole," he wrote. I think he makes a good point. It's time to rethink a policy that metes out long, mandatory prison sentences to nonviolent criminals. As the nation's prison population has grown, so too has the cost of keeping millions of Americans behind bars. In 1982, it cost $9 billion to house inmates in local, state and federal lockups. By 1999 the cost had risen to $49 billion, the ABA said in its report. I'm all for government doing what's needed to punish criminals -- and to keep those who commit violent crimes locked up for a long time. But like Milburn, Archer and Kennedy, I think mandatory minimum sentences do more harm than good. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake