Pubdate: Mon, 12 Aug 2013
Source: Times-Tribune, The (Scranton PA)
Copyright: 2013 The Washington Post
Contact:  http://www.thetimes-tribune.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4440
Author: Sari Horwitz, The Washington Post
Page: A1

HOLDER: EASE UP ON DRUG OFFENDERS

Attorney General Will Outline a Package of Comprehensive Prison 
Reforms Aimed to Boost Fiscal and Societal Efficiency.

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder is set to announce today 
that low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with no ties to gangs or 
large-scale drug organizations will no longer be charged with 
offenses that impose severe mandatory sentences.

The new Justice Department policy is part of a comprehensive prison 
reform package that Mr. Holder will reveal in a speech to the 
American Bar Association in San Francisco, according to senior 
department officials. He is also expected to introduce a policy to 
reduce sentences for elderly, nonviolent inmates and find 
alternatives to prison for nonviolent criminals.

Justice Department lawyers have worked for months on the proposals, 
which Mr. Holder wants to make the cornerstone of the rest of his tenure.

"A vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too 
many Americans and weakens too many communities," Mr. Holder plans to 
say today, according to excerpts of his remarks that were provided to 
The Washington Post. "However, many aspects of our criminal justice 
system may actually exacerbate this problem rather than alleviate it."

Mr. Holder is calling for a change in Justice Department policies to 
reserve the most severe penalties for drug offenses for serious, 
high-level or violent drug traffickers. He has directed his 94 U.S. 
attorneys across the country to develop specific, locally tailored 
guidelines for determining when federal charges should be filed and 
when they should not.

"Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for 
no good law enforcement reason," Mr. Holder plans to say. "We cannot 
simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation."

The attorney general can make some of these changes to drug policy on 
his own. He is giving new instructions to federal prosecutors on how 
they should write their criminal complaints when charging low-level 
drug offenders, to avoid triggering the mandatory minimumsentences. 
Under certain statutes, inflexible sentences for drug crimes are 
mandated regardless of the facts in the case, reducing the discretion 
of prosecutors, judges and juries.

Some of Mr. Holder's other initiatives will require legislative 
change. Mr. Holder is urging passage of legislation with bipartisan 
support that is aimed at giving federal judges more discretion in 
applying mandatory minimum sentences to certain drug offenses.

"Such legislation will ultimately save our country billions of 
dollars," Mr. Holder said of a bill supported by Sens. Richard 
Durbin, D-Ill., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rand 
Paul, RKy. "Although incarceration has a role to play in our justice 
system, widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local 
levels is both ineffective and unsustainable."

The cost of incarceration in the United States was $80 billion in 
2010, according to the Justice Department. While the U. S. population 
has increased by about a third since 1980, the federal prison 
population has grown-by-about 800 percent. Justice Department 
officials said federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent 
over capacity.

Federal officials attribute part of that increase to mandatory 
minimum sentences for drugs, including marijuana, under legislation 
passed in the 1980s. Under the AntiDrug Abuse Act of 1986, for 
example, a minimum sentence of five years without parole was mandated 
for possession of 5 grams of crack, while the same sentence was 
mandated for possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine, law 
enforcement officials said, pointing to discrepancies that they say 
have led to higher levels of incarceration in poorer communities.

"Sentencing by mandatory minimums is the antithesis of rational 
sentencing policy," American Bar Association lawyer James Felman said 
in testimony three years ago before the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Although the United States is home to 5 percent of the world's 
population, almost a quarter of the world's prisoners are 
incarcerated in American prisons, according to the Justice 
Department. More than 219,000 federal inmates are behind bars, and 
almost half of them are serving time for drug-related crimes.

An additional 9 million to 10 million people cycle through local 
jails in the United States each year. About 40 percent of former 
federal prisoners and more than 60 percent of former state prisoners 
are rearrested or have their supervision revoked within three years 
after their release, often for technical or minor violations of the 
terms of their release.

Mr. Holder will say he has also revised the department's prison 
policy to allow for more compassionate releases of elderly inmates 
who did not commit violent crimes, have served significant portions 
of their sentences and pose no threat to the public.

Over the next weeks, Mr. Holder and his deputies plan to visit cities 
to promote their prison agenda and point to examples of the type of 
change the attorney general is advocating.

New legislation in Kentucky, for example, has reserved prison beds 
for only the most serious criminals, focusing resources instead on 
community supervision and other alternatives. The state is projected 
to reduce its prison population by more than 3,000 over the next 10 
years, saving more than $400 million, according to Justice Department 
officials.

Investments in drug treatment for nonviolent offenders and changes to 
parole policies helped Arkansas reduce its prison population by more 
than 1,400 inmates, U.S. officials said, and led to a reduction in 
the prison population of more than 5,000 inmates last year in Texas.

Mr. Holder does not plan to announce any changes in the Justice 
Department's policy on marijuana, which is illegal under federal law. 
Two states, Colorado and Washington, legalized marijuana in November. 
Supporters of the measures argued that hundreds of millions of 
dollars have been wasted on a failed war against marijuana that has 
filled American prisons with low-level offenders.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom