Mandatory Minimums
Nothing betrays the latter-day puritanism that governs so much of life in America quite like the hundreds of thousands of people who are incarcerated in state and federal prisons for using drugs…
For decades I have been among those calling for decriminalizing non-violent, victimless crimes [like using drugs or selling sex]. Unfortunately this progressive goal remains a pipe dream.
For now, though, I am happy that at least the federal government is taking steps to redress the disparity between the draconian sentences routinely meted out to users of crack cocaine, most of whom happen to be Black, and the lenient sentences routinely meted out to users of powder cocaine, most of whom happen to be White.
(“(Black) Users of Crack vs. (White) Users of Powder Cocaine,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 3, 2011)
Given the above, you’ll appreciate why I was so pleased to hear Attorney General Eric Holder announce – during an address to the American Bar Association in San Francisco yesterday – that:
… low-level, non-violent drug offenders with no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels won’t be charged with offenses that impose mandatory minimum sentences…
Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law-enforcement reason.
(Associated Press, August 12, 2013)
This executive action alone will limit the growth of the federal prison population by as much as 50 percent. Because, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, 45 percent of the people incarcerated each year are convicted for the kinds of low-level, non-violent drug offenses Holder cited. Blacks and Hispanics will benefit most because they account for about 70 percent of those convicted for such offenses.
The problem with using mandatory minimum sentences (as the primary weapon in the government’s Sisyphean war on drugs) is that they strip judges of the discretion to impose much shorter sentences in cases where the facts and circumstances make them clearly warranted. For example, too often people (mostly wives and girlfriends) get convicted and sentenced like violent criminals for merely being guilty by association with drug dealers. Not to mention the first-time offenders who get thrown into the system as relative kindergartners only to be unleashed on society 10 or 20 years later as PhD graduates in criminal behavior.
Of course, as my opening quote above duly notes, state prisons have been overcrowded with low-level, non-violent drug offenders too. But the irony cannot be lost on criminal justice activists (like Reverend Al Sharpton and rap mogul Russell Simmons) – who have been fighting for an end to mandatory minimum sentences for decades – that White governors in Southern states (like South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas) began taking steps to redress these issues years ago.
After all, some will surely think this is just a case of the first Black president and attorney general abusing their power to give Black and Hispanic criminals a get-out-of-jail-free card. But these White (Republican) governors – who were the first government officials to inject fairness, racial equality, and common sense into the criminal justice system – would beg to differ.
Incidentally, Holder took pains to explain that the new approach will not be to grant immunity from prosecution to low-level, non-violent drug offenders. Instead, it will be to direct federal prosecutors to structure charges to ensure that they qualify more for drug treatment and community service than for prison:
We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate – not merely to convict, warehouse and forge.
(Associated Press, August 12, 2013)
What’s more, this new approach will free up government resources to enable the DEA, FBI, and local police to combat real, violent crime – especially in places like Chicago, where murders are becoming as commonplace as they are in Baghdad.
Stop and Frisk
I was also pleased yesterday when a federal judge condemned New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk tactic as a gross violation of the constitutional prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Not least because, according to the March 4, 2012 edition of the Huffington Post, of the 4.4 million stops NYC cops have made over the past decade, 87 percent of the targets have been Black or Hispanic.
Of course, it would be one thing if these stops, which are most often conducted by White cops, resulted in legitimate arrests. But only 6 percent of those subjected to this public humiliation were actually arrested. And Whites wonder why Black and Hispanic men have such an abiding distrust of, and antipathy towards, the police...?
Just imagine walking along the street in your own neighborhood (a la Trayvon Martin) and having cops stop you for no reason to interrogate and frisk you … spread eagle. This happening once is upsetting enough; imagine it happening repeatedly….
Again, the operative stat is not the 6 percent of these arrests that are legitimate; it’s the 94 percent of them that are not. Which is not surprising given that the only probable cause the police needed to stop and frisk was the subjective suspicion that the person was acting furtively, loitering in a high-crime area, or had a “suspicious bulge.” Come to think of it, criminalizing an unnatural-looking bulge might explain why so many Black men were stopped….
But seriously, let me hasten to clarify that the judge did not order an end to this practice. She merely ordered federal monitors to oversee reforms – such as requiring the police to videotape their actions in this regard. I agree.
After all, I am sensible enough to recognize that stop and frisk, even though little more than a euphemism for racial profiling, has been one of many factors in reducing crime. For example, according to the December 28, 2012 edition of gothamist.com, between 1963 and 2012, murders dropped from a high of 2,245 in 1990 to a low of 414 last year. And let’s face it, the reason so many Blacks and Hispanics are targeted is that they are the ones who commit a grossly disproportionate number of the crimes (too often in their own neighborhoods) that were/are such a menace to big cities like New York and Chicago.
My only contention is that the police could be equally effective by merely patrolling high-crime areas (on foot) and establishing trust and familiarity with the people who live there. For statistics also show that such neighborhood policing enables the police to better distinguish between law-abiding residents and those who prey on them (who, I submit, should be stopped and frisked, aggressively).
Whatever the case, it is untenable to argue, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg does, that all Blacks and Hispanics in high-crime areas must give up their constitutional rights for the police to serve and protect them.
Beyond this, I just wish the Blacks and Hispanics – who are hell-bent on committing crimes – had enough sense to stop cannibalizing their own. Except that they are smart enough to know that, if they extended their turf to White neighborhoods, they would stick out even more than yarmulke-wearing Jews in Nazi Germany….
The sad reality is that, with stop and frisk, Blacks and Hispanics are the ones whose civil liberties are most likely to be violated; without it, they are the ones whose peace and safety are most likely to be violated. What cursed fate it is (sometimes) to be Black or Hispanic.
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