Rolling Stone: Why Can't We End Mass Incarceration?

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/33176-why-cant-we-end-mass-incarceration

In April 2014, the commission approved a reduction in sentences for certain drug crimes going forward. "This modest reduction in drug penalties is an important step toward reducing the problem of prison overcrowding at the federal level," said Judge Patti B. Saris, the commission's chair. "Reducing the federal-prison population has become urgent." In July, the commission voted to make those reductions retroactive as well. Prisoners who would have received the lower sentences were eligible to petition judges for early release. Of the more than 17,000 inmates who submitted petitions, a quarter were rejected over fears for public safety.

That the greatest release of federal prisoners in history emanated from a policy tweak by an obscure administrative body says something about just how absent elected officials with far more sweeping powers have been from the reform process. In his final months in office, President Obama has focused more on the need for criminal-justice reform. In the summer, he became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison, and he has used the executive power of clemency to commute some of the most egregiously unfair sentences of 89 federal drug convicts. Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the

Justice Department began telling prosecutors that their mandate is not to hit every defendant with the heaviest penalty they can, but rather to seek a nuanced and individualized justice.

But a handful of pardons don't amount to much when there are hundreds of thousands of federal prisoners, and an attorney general's directive for prosecutors to show a modicum of restraint isn't guaranteed to outlast this administration. "All roads to meaningful sentencing reform pass through

Congress," says Julie Stewart, president and founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "If there's going to be meaningful federal-sentencing reform, it can only come from there. And until recently, Congress hasn't been interested."

For decades, beginning in the 1980s, members of Congress and senators on both sides of the aisle were very interested in federal sentencing — specifically, in making sentences longer and making it harder for judges to tailor their sentences to the case at hand. As the War on Drugs was kicking into high gear in the Eighties, Congress created a host of new mandatory-minimum penalties. By forcing judges to apply unprecedented harsh sentences, the logic went, mandatory-minimum laws would standardize punishments and offer a strong disincentive to people contemplating committing drug crimes. The rest is history: The federal-prison population swelled from 24,000 prisoners in 1980 to 219,000 in 2013. Nearly half of federal inmates are serving time for drug crimes. Of those, 60 percent were subject to mandatory minimums when they were sentenced.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. A) racism, B) money.

A lot of people are making a lot of money off institutionalized racism. That's why it's so hard to end mass incarceration.