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. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom