Pubdate: Fri, 16 Aug 2013
Source: Herald, The (Everett, WA)
Copyright: 2013 The Daily Herald Co.
Contact:  http://www.heraldnet.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/190

IMPORTANT WINS FOR JUSTICE

Two major wins for our crim-inal justice system this week, and they 
are not unrelated: First, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced 
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.

Secondly, a federal judge ruled that the New York Police Department 
violated the Constitution with its practice of stopping and searching 
people suspected of criminal activity.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin found that New York City's 
so-called stop-andfrisk program amounted to "indirect racial 
profiling" by targeting blacks and Hispanics disproportionate to 
their populations. Testimony reflected data that the New York Civil 
Liberties Union has been compiling for decades: A NYCLU analysis 
revealed that innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police 
stops and street interrogations more than 4 million times since 2002, 
and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming 
target of these tactics. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked 
New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the NYPD's own reports.

Stops, by law, must be based on reasonable suspicion of a crime, a 
standard that city officials insist that NYPD officers have met, the 
Wall Street Journal reported. The city argued during testimony that 
it focused a disproportionate share of its resources in minority 
neighborhoods with high crime rates and that its practices were "not 
racially biased policing."

The disproportionate number of minorities in our federal prisons for 
drug crimes argue against that claim, and of course New York is not 
alone in that respect. Currently, more than 219,000 federal inmates 
are behind bars, and almost half of them are serving time for 
drug-related crimes. Hence Holder's announcement.

Federal officials attribute part of that increase to mandatory 
minimum sentences for drugs, including marijuana, under legislation 
passed in the 1980s, the Washington Post reported. Under the 
Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, for example, a minimum sentence of five 
years without parole was mandated for possession of five grams of 
crack cocaine, 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.

After previous failed attempts, Congress finally acknowledged and 
addressed this disparity with The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, and 
signed into law by President Obama.

Using data from the FBI, a 2009 Human Rights Watch report found that 
blacks have been arrested nationwide on drug charges at higher rates 
than whites for nearly three decades, even though they engage in drug 
offenses at comparable rates. The data also show that most drug 
arrests are for nothing more serious than possession.

Holder's action and Scheindlin's ruling will help us put us on a path 
to reform this ongoing injustice.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom