Pubdate: Wed, 14 Aug 2013
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2013 The Baltimore Sun Company
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37

MINIMAL REFORM

Holder's decision to not subject low-level nonviolent drug offenders 
to mandatory federal prison sentences is a modest step in the right direction

U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder's plan to reduce overcrowding in 
federal prisons by instructing federal prosecutors to stop invoking 
mandatory minimum sentences against low-level, nonviolent drug 
offenders was a welcome, if overdue, announcement. The policy's chief 
shortcoming is that Mr. Holder can't, by himself, correct this 
long-standing problem. That will require intervention by Congress - 
as well as by legislatures in states where similar problems exist.

That the United States locks up too many people for too long is 
unquestionably true. It doesn't take a card-carrying member of the 
American Civil Liberties Union to recognize this either. A growing 
number of state houses have already been taking up mandatory minimum 
sentences because incarcerating so many people has gotten 
outrageously expensive. In Maryland, the price for housing and 
feeding 22,000 inmates exceeds three-quarters of a billion dollars annually.

The numbers speak for themselves. While the nation's overall 
population has grown by about one-third since 1980, its prison 
population has swelled by nearly eight-fold. The U.S. may represent 
just 5 percent of the world's population, but it accounts for more 
than a quarter of all prisoners. Many of these are small-time actors 
in the well-intentioned but often misguided "war on drugs." As a 
result, federal prisons are now filled 40 percent beyond capacity.

Making matters worse, this so-called justice is clearly meted out 
unequally in regard to race and class. As a study released earlier 
this year pointed out, black men have been given sentences 20 percent 
longer than white men convicted of similar crimes. Mr. Holder calls 
this "shameful," and he is correct.

What the attorney general chose to do about this comes under the 
mantle of prosecutorial discretion. U.S. attorneys will now, for 
instance, pick and choose whether to indicate the quantity of drugs 
involved with certain defendants on charging documents. Specifying 
certain amounts can invoke harsh mandatory minimum sentences. Judges 
will still have the discretion to dole out these tougher sentences, 
but it will no longer be automatic.

Some may naively suggest that prosecutors should not have such 
decision-making power, but that has always been part of the judicial 
process. Just as one of Mr. Holder's predecessors, John Ashcroft, had 
the authority to tell his attorneys to always charge the "most 
serious, readily provable offense" 10 years ago, Mr. Holder can 
choose otherwise. Prosecutors have always had the authority to choose 
which charges to pursue.

It would be even better for Congress to take up the issue. 
State-level reforms have been approved in recent years by Democrats 
and Republicans alike from Ohio to Texas. But it's safe to say that 
things have become so dysfunctional on Capitol Hill that serious 
reform - even the pending legislation with sponsors from both 
political parties - is a long shot at best.

Nevertheless, ending the costly and counterproductive policies that 
have lead to the current mass incarceration ought to be a high 
priority in Washington and elsewhere. Nothing Mr. Holder can do now 
can address current inmates, including the elderly whose continued 
incarceration serves no earthly purpose, or those facing mandatory 
sentences in state prisons, which house more than 80 percent of all inmates.

But it is a step in the right direction and should encourage 
lawmakers to follow suit. Why didn't Mr. Holder take this action 
sooner? Unfortunately, we suspect it was the same sort of politics 
that have hampered reforms in the past - a fear that advocating any 
rollback of mandatory minimum sentences will be perceived as being 
"soft" on crime. Considering how much more effective it would be to 
spend those billions of dollars now spent on prisons ($80 billion 
annually to be precise) on programs that actually reduce crime, such 
reforms aren't soft at all.

It is encouraging to note, too, that the attorney general's 
announcement coincides with a federal judge's ruling that New York 
City's stop-and-frisk program amounted to a form of racial profiling 
and thus violated the Constitution. Programs that target blacks and 
other minority groups are another reason why prison sentences are 
meted out so unfairly. Tough-on-crime laws are nothing of the sort if 
they merely result in putting more minorities in prison for longer 
periods of time.
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